Music Analysis On the Rolling Stone

Complete Music Magazine Analysis of the Rolling Stone

 The rolling Stone Magazine was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner, who still is today the magazine publisher. The first issue was released on November 9th 1967. The Rolling Stone was best known for its Musical genre and coverage. In 1990 the magazine shifted its target audience to younger readers, and who are also into oriental television. In the recent years however it had changed back to its old ways of music content. For Jann Wenner to first publish the first issue, he borrowed £7,500 off of his family and wife, to afford the costs of printing and distributing. The Rolling Stone was initially published in everyday newspaper format. The magazine is based in New York, America. In the first issue Wenner named the magazine after the 1950 blues song Rollin’ Stone written by Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones and also Bob Dylan’s hit single Like a Rolling Stone. In the 1970’s The Rolling Stone started to make their make but including political views within the magazine. The magazine also helped launch prominent author’s career. It was at this moment in the magazines career, they were featuring their most top stories to cover. During the 1980’s the magazine shifted to more entertainment magazine however music was still the main topic. Overall The Rolling Stone was initially know for covering the industry of music and the reports of political view by Hunter S Thompson, however discontinued due to his death in 2005. As of August 2008 the format of the Rolling Stone Magazine changed its format of an average normal magazine. The company is on a multi-platform having their own website as well as the magazine. The Rolling Stone is within the category of popular culture.

 By Olivia Jarvis

Music Magazine Analysis

College Magazine Analysis RESUBMISSIONS

The font styles are varied and are suitable. This enables to not have a variety and doesn't make the look of the magazine repetitive.  The main header is bold and noticeable, so therefore it is obvious what the actual magazine is about. The main image overlaps the Masthead however, this is not a major issue as it is not a big obstruction which covers the majority of the title. You can still clearly see that the Masthead is "College". The Masthead is in a bright colour orange, which with the white background works in its favour and makes it stand out highly and would grab many people's attention.
The colours used on the cover are fairly varied, from blacks, blues, red and orange. The colours don't go with a specific font either. The variety of colours however I feel like are far too much, and there is no need for such a variety, sticking with 3 colour max is more than enough because it them has a set theme to comply with. If they just stuck with the colours, black and blue along with the hint of orange to fit with the masthead, it would look much better, instead of having these random colours as an extra. If anything it makes the front cover to loud and bit too much.
The main image for the over is different, the image is in black and white with a white background, which wouldn't be a big deal if the model wasn't wearing a white outfit. He blends in too much with the background so the image does not have the same eye-catching effect as say other music magazines and reality magazines do.
Going back to some of the fonts, some are fairly fine and with the harsh white background it is very difficult to read them, for example one of the cover lines on the left, it says "Sexy Summer Style", with is smart alliteration and the sound makes it more appealing, you can barley see if as the font style makes it barely visible, even with the colour being black. However, some of the bolder fonts are on the names of people, which works to grab people's attention. Which is what other magazines do, they have the name is big bold writing and then have a smaller sentence below just to give a rough hint or outline of the feature inside.
There are a large variety of cover lines, which gives a variety of different people to notice, but in addition to this, they are all college or education related. With the inclusion of universities and the latest technology on the market which will assist students with their work. It even has a gossip side to it, right at the bottom of the page it states "Campus Romance", as many reader buy reality magazines because they are interested in other people's business, it allows people access to information they wouldn't necessarily get from word of mouth.

Audience Questionnaire Analysis

From the questionnaire 90% of the people surveyed said that they do not read the school magazine, therefore we can already tell that the product does not work and is not reaching to its target audience. The second question showed us what the best colours to use for the magazine. In conclusion, the most popular colours to use for the magazine are Black, Red, White, Blue and Green. These will be the most appealing colours for the students to have on the magazine. The next question shows that 30% want the magazine out monthly, 20% want it every fortnight and 30% wanted it every term. This shows because we only have 20% a fortnight we are better off to do it monthly. When it came to asking for the price of the magazine 40% said they wouldn’t pay anything for it, 20% said 50p, 12% said 25p and another 12% said £1. This concludes that if we had no extras we could sell the magazine for free as chosen by the fellow students., however, if we had advertisements or added extras the price may have to be considered if the magazine was going to be an ongoing project.  The main topics which were the most popular to have within the magazine were, competitions, music, food, fashion and revision. So, making sure that the magazine includes these main topics many of our target audience will want to buy the product. The next question came back with 95% of the people said yes to free stuff and would be encouraged to buy the magazine knowing that there is free stuff to have. This could mean that there will need to be a small price on the magazine due to the free stuff included inside. The suitable price would have to be around 50p. For the front cover picture, it will need to be based around students work and students themselves. When it comes to the magazine being on a multi-platform, 80% said yes so there would need to be a web link for students so they can access the magazine online as well. For the adverts in the magazine 75% said they would want them, so we would need relevant to the 5 subjects which the magazine will be about, so food for example, there could be an advert for KFC. Finally, people were asked about where will be the best place to distribute the product and most either said both the coffee shop and reception. So, we could distribute the product in both areas to avoid lines and large volumes of people in one area.

College Magazine