Music Magazine Advertisement

What Are Music Magazines? 

A music magazine is a collection of music bundled into a paper to entertain a viewer. Some music magazines target particular demographics and some can be quite general when it comes to the music genre. However this has been starting to fail as years go by people are getting more electronically involved with online streaming like Spotify or Soundcloud and music magazine purchases have fallen, again however there are some music magazines that have continued on and still making a good amount of money to keep the magazine theme going. For Example the magazine R2 targets audiences between the ages of 35 - 55, they issue advertisement and music from genres like Folk, Music, Rock. Blues and Roots which is what middle aged people like as a whole to listen too. Another reason why this is quite a highly purchased music magazine ( Average 30000 a month) is that middle aged people grew up with music magazine and are not as reminded as young people are with electronic online streaming so they go for the much simpler option.

Music magazines tend to give something away with  the magazine it self to promote the artist and the magazine distributer, for instance there would be a free CD pack inside so it lets those who buy the magazine have a listen and encourage them to take further action like becoming a fan and subscribing.

Advertisements in a magazine 

Advertisements  in a music magazine is what makes it a music magazine, artists and bands would pay good money for them to have a page, half a page or perhaps a quarter of a page on a music magazine to promote their music. After researching with the R2 music magazine I had found out that to advertise on a full page to a 35- 55 year old audience would cost £800 which is fairly cheap for a whole page bearing in mind that over 30000 people buy this magazine. It would be a good start to sharing the music they created for a cheap price.

There are certain codes and conventions when music advertisements are in a magazine, for instance, typically you have the:
Album Name (Usually in big font)
Artist Name (Usually in big font)
A picture of the artist or some art work
A release date
A review ( Typically, however some just make there own up they wouldn't have quote marks.


Conventions And Codes Used In Music Magazine

Codes and Conventions are scattered around a magazine in attempt to bribe the views to purchase the object. There are many things which may attract / entertain a person, but conventions usually play a big part in attracting more customers, for example, perhaps the artist will be on the front of the magazine advertisement to promote her/himself. Perhaps the artist is half nude to attract more of the male fans as men are known to sexually objectify women. For example artists like Rhianna or Arianna Grande usually take part in going half nude to attract viewers. Another convention which is popular in music magazines is the big writing for the artist and album, this promotes the album and artist.

The magazine on the right has conventions such as the artist name and album, the review is also a convention, the background has something going on like artwork. However this magazine advertisement also contains lots of codes (Meaning how the information is getting across) The artists name is a bright gold to signify the artist and stands the advertisement out. The text is a default black so people only look at the bright part of the magazine first which is the name. Convention and code for the bottom of the magazine is that  it is promoting her website and then tells us the album is out and is downloadable, it is purple and white which also stands out but not as strongly as the bright font  standing as the artist name. (Ellie Goulding)

Madonna's album advertisement is very strong in codes and conventions. For example Madonna's name is just plastered in big letters at the top with the name of the album highlighted in a bright pink to show clarity and colour within her music. Madonna's face is just lit up and coloured which will attract lots of new fans as it's the type of picture you won't be able to look away from. In the face of Madonna there are more faces of herself which will promote her artwork as well as let it be intriguing for people to look at. The colours stand out massively, particularly her make up too as she looks half asleep and she looks very plain which enables the viewer to look at the pictures installed on her face. The reviews are also at the bottom of the advertisement in a soft colour as well as hinting  that there are 34 songs on the album. Also telling the viewer the release date for stores. The pictures in the face represent her through the ages and tells a story to a generation which is why many young people also like her for her music.



Lana Del Rey's music magazine advertisement  is very much simple, her name is plastered at the top is a capital white font with the artist standing underneath the name. Her name of the album is in a blue with smaller font underneath that telling the viewer when the album is out and and underneath that with squished up letters is her website. The artist herself is wearing make up and looking very emotional, with wearing red lipstick which may symbolise love or perhaps hate but can bring a viewers eye to attention. Her clothes are very smart and not very revealing unlike some advertisements for music albums  with the background a being a blue/cloudy sky, probably signifying normality. The emotion in her face is very emotionless, like she is fed up up of something, which may beg the question to what kind of genre of music she produces. Instantly I'd think quite a sad genre just by looking at the art and details on the front cover of her music magazine advertisement.



Practising Photoshop:



My talent in photoshop is very minimal, i don't do much stuff in this part of the media so learning it now would be a big stage for me. We set design a little practice photoshop magazine cover and I was at the front of it.



 

I was using this photo to begin with.

I add an army background so the album cover is relevant to the album and song.

Finally I add the text that I thought fitted and I created a short magazine advertisement.

Photography practice

I plan on having a practice photoshoot with Max on this date, I'll be using a white wall so when it comes to using photoshop we can easily cut around him. Max displays his personality excellently in terms of being photogenic and it can really inspire me and Sean to take things to the next level when it comes to producing our covers for our CD digipack.

Photos of our actor shot by Sam -  Practice Photoshoot

Planning: Our initial ideas

  For our initial ideas we wanted it to link with the CD Digipack realisably well but both convey the same in terms of advertising. With our music magazine advertisement there are certain elements we must include for it to aim its full potential for example, the date of release, album name, artist name, social media, reviews and lots more. For our first initial idea we quickly made something to show audiences to provide us some powerful feed back. This was the photo we shown. 

Sean created this fairly quickly to give us a sort of idea of what our first image for MMA will be. He also made others so we can increase the amount of feedback.



Feedback from this picture

The feedback we received from the MMA cover is that the picture was just too clustered, some thought that the image was quite straining to the eyes. As this is first and original feedback Sean acted quickly to improve the text and picture type to make sure that the advert cover is comfortable for the eyes and is unique.

The main suggested improvement would be to remove some of the text. As it is, the image looks too cluttered- making it difficult for the reader to pick up all the information in a quick glance.

We will improve the design, reducing how much clutter is on the screen.

Sean ended up changing the dimensions and the layout of the image as

this makes the information much easier to pick up.

Also, Sean changed some of the colours and the overlay method- Setting the layer type to 'Divide'. This is because it stands out more, contrasting against the plainer colours of the background image.

However external feedback told us that the picture is too clunky and doesn't look like a magazine advertisement, to which me and Sean agreed and started developing something that is more connected with the type of genre of music which the artist makes.

      

We then came up with this which gave us extra space to apply our font and graphic on the left. However the problem with this is that it may give off a futuristic vibe and that's not what we are trying to convey, we want the audience to see the Euphoric expression hidden within the photo so it create s a stronger sense of mood and atmosphere.

I then created this as I thought the image was very powerful and unique so I added and darkened some of the shadows to give it that more 'edgy' effect. However when looking over it our character seems to look quite menacing and again that's not the type of image we are trying to convey to our audience.

I created this image which has very tiny detail added to it in photoshop to portray the quirky drug like effect and euphoric gratitude, this image gives us lots of space to work on and creates  a sense of an urban atmosphere which is symbolised within the music video.  


Construction Process: 

I'm going to be using the picture above for our music magazine advertisement because it gives a powerful look for an advertisement and with photo shop effects that I'll add, it will explain the 'euphoric' intention of our overall piece.


I get my photo and I start to cut around the face so I'm able to move it to my main production area 

Ive got the face I wanted which I can now use to elaborate more on. I've added two extra layers and different colours to indicate and pin point areas which might express any type of euphoric tension.


Afterwards I got a photo from our music video which I overlay over the mouth to create something weird and unique  whilst adding different colours and experimenting. Red seems bit dangerous and projects a murder vibe therefore another colour is needed.









I didn't like that idea because it didn't seem right with any other colour and the red colour created a strong 'killer' vibe which again isn't what we are going for. Instead I introduced a gradient which  can be considered as the same colour of the sky and sea. Both are symbols of 'Euphoria' and happiness.




I then duplicated an image of Max to make a green blurry version of him and added a smudge effect from the filter gallery to help it blend in and show a drug effect happening.

My next job was to see what font may be the best use to me and the image above.

The font above is an example of what I could use as it gives an electronic atmosphere within the image. This is what it looked like:

This is what the text stands out to be. The font colour will change to something lighter so when it comes to the audience reviewing it, it comes across as eye catching and visually appealing.

Here I added a bit of light to the textual font and added a hint of red to indicate the colours within our music video, for example we use a smoke red bomb and red effects throughout.

I moved the text around and lighten it up so it is easily visible. I also created a border to go around the advert itself make it look more of a professional product.

the font colour and placement was very general so I changed the text colour to gold/yellow to mix in with the atmosphere which the advert creates. I also added on some external wording to make the music magazine seem more professional and competent.

With this though, it became very 'clunky' therefore I got rid of some words and organised it in a suitable way in which it still comes across as visually appealing; Images below is me moving   text around into a suitable position.

Our final product: