Question 1 practise

We think magazines are popular because:
-Articles with musicians

I agree that magazines are popular because of articles with musicians as readers would like to read about them whether it’s because they are a fan or just for entertainment in general. These articles usually vary from question and answer to following an artist on tour; it definitely is an interesting feature of the magazine which would attract people to buy it.

In the 4^th December 2012 issue of TOTP (Top of the Pops), Little Mix was the cover star. They were interviewed about their personal life (parties and make-up) rather than their music. This would attract people to read it since the main target audience of TOTP are young girls who are likely to be interested in the idols themselves rather than their music. This therefore leads the magazine to involve a lot of non-music related sections such as fashion and make-up. The type of the article was ‘question and answer’ which is appealing to the target market as it is fun and entertaining to read. We can see that the answers are very much scripted which would have been done to protect their image. Furthermore the image of Little Mix posing is also quite fake as they are trying to appear perfect to the target market as they themselves care about their looks as much as the audience do. The intertextual reference to Rita Ora’s song ‘How we do’ in the title causes the readers to feel intelligent as they know what it is referring to and therefore will enjoy reading the articles in TOTP as it always has examples of intertextual references.

Contrastingly, in NME magazines the articles are about the music of the artists and an example of an article is ‘The times they are a-changing’ (17^th November 2012) which is about Jake Bugg. This article is based on Jake Bugg’s music rather than his life. Readers would want to read it because it is more honest as the writer directly quotes from Jake Bugg. Unlike in TOTP, a lot of the quotes from Jake Bugg involve swearing as he does not care about what people think of him. Since Jake Bugg does not really promote himself that much by going on TV shows for example, people are less likely to know about how he got famous and therefore it is an interesting article for the readers to find out about him. The image of Jake Bugg with him looking down at his guitar whilst playing it suggest to us that he is very serious about his music and he doesn’t care about what people think of him. Throughout the article there are many intertextual references of other artists and an example is the title (‘The times they are a-changing’) which is referring to Bob Dylan’s song. This could probably only be understood by the readers if they are a fan of that music genre and by understanding it, it makes them feel clever. This then means they are more likely to buy the magazine again to read the articles as they can understand the intertextual references made by the writer.

Both magazines help the readers form relationships as they can talk to someone about the article or the artist. Additionally they both help the reader identify what kind of music they like as they enjoy what they are reading. However I believe that TOTP is more about entertaining the readers with the scripted question and answer articles which are fun, whereas NME gives information to them with the honesty in the article about Jake Bugg’s music.

Although saying this, I believe that other features of a magazine are as important as articles with musicians such as posters and reviews. I think posters or freebies overall are very effective in the selling of a magazine as fans like to collect things involving their favourite artists and reviews give a good idea to the reader about what people think of a song or album, which is very useful to them.