THE MAGAZINE PITCH WORKING TITLE: What will the magazine be called?

The title of the magazine will be ‘Beat’. I chose this because it’s not a name of a music magazine already in the industry and will make mine stand out. The idea of this name is that it’s an easily recognisable musical term, which will therefore make the reader spot straight away that the magazine is a music magazine. Beat is a very quick, snappy word to say, meaning that it will stand out in the reader’s mind. The word beat can be linked with every single genre of music, because a beat is what music is based on, which links to the wide variety of my magazine. I want my audience to be able to familiarise with the title, so the fact that a beat is from just about every genre of music, it will make them believe that in the magazine there’ll be something for them to enjoy. I plan to make it a magazine that mixes together a variety of genres, similar to ‘Q’ Magazine. As it’s a magazine of various music genres, I aimed to choose a short, quick word that is associated with most genres, which is where ‘Beat’ came from. I decided to just use one short word for the name of my magazine, because it means the less words/letters in it, the larger the font can be of the word I do have. I want this to be the case, so that it really stand out on the front cover page of the magazine when it’s sat on the shelf. Another reason for my choice to use just one word, is that all three of the magazines I researched for my Textual Analysis used just the one word, ‘Kerrang’, ‘Mixmag’ and ‘Q’, with the latter actually only using one letter. This makes the title stick in the reader’s head as there’s less to remember. Another reason this could stand out for the reader is that they may recognise that a beat could be a reference to any genre of music, intriguing them into finding out more about this new music magazine and about what types of genres it includes. If I find that people believe my title should be two words instead of one, since there are already a large amount of one-word title music magazines out there, I will be open to changing this at a later date. But I predict that this short, quick one word ‘Beat’ will be more attractive to the audience and have more of an effect on them.

MAGAZINE GENRE: What music genre will the magazine focus on? Instead of focusing on one specific genre, I’ve decided that I will focus on a wide range of musical genres to suit different audiences. During my research, I found that Q was the most successful of the three magazines that I looked at and I think the main reason for this is that it doesn’t have a specific genre. I will do this similarly and include a variety of different music tastes so that there’s something for everybody. During my survey, when I asked my audience which genres were their favourite from a certain list, they came back very close together. Therefore, I will target all these different people by pulling in a wide variety of music. By choosing to focus on a variety of music, it means I can help my readers to experiment and try something new when it comes to their music taste, as there will be things in the magazine that they wouldn’t usually try. The audience can then appreciate the music which they like, as well as challenging themselves by exploring new genres/styles. The readers of my magazine will then have to be open to trying new things. They will have to want to get something from the magazine that they haven’t heard before, instead of just looking for the one genre they like the best. The choice to use varied genres also links well with the working title of the magazine. A ‘beat’ can be from any genre of music, which links with the fact that you don’t know what will be in the magazine each issue, it could be from any genre of music, just like a beat. Focusing on different genres also gives me the opportunity to make every page different. Instead of every page being focused on different aspects of pop or different aspects of rock, etc. they could be focused on absolutely any type of music, giving my articles a very wide variation. The only downside of focusing on a wide range of genres is that it wouldn’t appeal to someone with a limited music taste, for example the 16 year old boy that I interviewed for my audience research, as he said the only type of music he was into was rock. This is because, although my magazine will feature aspects of rock as well as other genres, the fact that it’s a broad range means that there will only be a maximum of a few pages dedicated to each genre, unlike magazines like Kerrang! which are fully dedicated to their one specialist genre. My readers will need to have a wide music taste and be willing to try new things, more like the 32 year old female that I also interviewed.

FREQUENCY AND COVER PRICE: When will the magazine be published and how much will it cost? The magazine will be released every fortnight. This is because I didn’t want to release it every single week, because that would mean that it’d be a struggle to come up with top quality articles every single week, and make it long enough to read. However, I didn’t want to release it monthly either, because I think it will take the reader 1-2 weeks to get through the whole magazine, leaving them another 2-3 weeks to wait around until the next issue comes out. It will be in the shops every other Monday. I’ve chosen Monday as it’s the beginning of the week, therefore the reader is more likely to remember that they need something from the shop on this day. It will stick in their heads as it’s one of their first tasks to do at the beginning of the week. They don’t have to wait for it throughout the week, they can get it straight away. One advantage of releasing it fortnightly instead of weekly is that the quality of photographs, paper and articles will be better, because there’s been more time to prepare it, which means the editor/photographer can spend more time perfecting everything before it goes to print. It also means that as the magazine is on the shelf for two weeks, it has two weeks to earn as much money as possible instead of just one. This will help the economic side of the magazine, which will also boost the quality of paper, articles & photos etc. Another advantage is that it can have more contents than a weekly music magazine. It’s also cheaper than Q Magazine, which is the biggest ‘general’ British music magazine in the industry at the moment. £2.99 is just under £3. I chose to do this, because it will make the audience think it’s a lot cheaper than it actually is as they see the 2 first instead of seeing a 3, but in reality they’re actually spending £3.

ATTITUDE: How will the magazine be presented to the audience? In the magazine, I will use a variety of boldness, emphasis and regular text. There will be certain aspects of the magazine which I will want the audience to read first before anything else. This could be because I think it might appeal to them or it could be because they need to read it to understand the rest of the text. To do this I will put emphasis on these aspects. I will use a variety of ways to do this. One example is that they will be big and bold. It will be large and fill a lot of space and will be in a very bold font. Another way of doing this is by using the colour scheme. Because my magazine is focused on a range of music genres, my colour scheme will also be quite varied. I will use black, whites and greys for darker, louder music articles, such as dubstep, rock, metal, however ‘hot’ colours like red, orange and yellow will be used in other easy-listening music, such as acoustic, classical and novelty. Therefore, bearing in mind what music genre is on the page, the colour scheme will be reflected in this and I will use the colour which is used least on the rest of the page for the text that I want to stand out. As it’s the colour used least on the rest of the page, it will draw the audience’s eyes to it. If the part I want the audience to see is an image, this will be different however. I will play with the image’s brightness, opacity etc. to make it really stand out. This could be making it brighter when the page is dark or lighter when the page is dark. This immediately will draw the eyes of the reader to it. Another way to make an image stand out could be by using photo frames. This will draw attention to the photo, because a frame is like the equivalent of making a text bold. It makes it larger and makes it stand out. I will also be sure to use a lot of pull quotes, taglines and anchorage. I discovered in my research that these are effective when trying to draw in a reader. Pull quotes make the reader wonder what context they were said, prompting them to read the article and find out this information. Taglines and anchorage can often provide more information about something than just the headline or title, informing the reader of what they’re letting themselves in for if they read the article. They can also provide a bit of mystery when they don’t tell the whole story, as the reader wonders what is meant by a certain phrase. Either way, they are effective techniques and definitely something that I will be looking to use in my magazine. The fact that I’m using so many different techniques to emphasize certain parts of it shows contrasts throughout the magazine, which will interest the audience into why each page is different. This may lead them to reading other articles that they wouldn’t normally read if it’s laid out differently, which is what I was aiming for with my magazine. With my layouts, I will try and please everybody as well, because some pages will have nearly no images and just all text, however some will be dominated by images, with a bit of text to go with it, meaning there’s different choices for people who enjoy reading long articles and those who don’t. And these images will be varied too. Some will be live concert images and some will be photoshoot images, to also appeal to wide ranges of people. All of these different aspects help to represent the variety and diversity of my magazine.

STYLE: What will make this magazine different to other ones? Well as I spoke about in the attitude section of the pitch, the magazine will have a lot of boldness and emphasis, to make sure that the audience are engaged throughout the whole magazine issue. But the biggest feature of my magazine that will make it different to others is that as well as featuring famous artists of different genres, there will also be features on artists that the audience are unlikely to have heard of. This is because during my survey, a number of people said that they’d like a music magazine to have features on new artists that they haven’t heard of, to help them get into new genres/styles of music that they wouldn’t normally listen to, or to hear about other artists in their favourite genre, who they haven’t heard of. Therefore, a lot of my magazine will be focused on unknown or upcoming artists to balance out the big artists everyone likes to hear about. Having such a wide variety in my magazine means that the audience may very well want to buy the next issue which is what I would like, because the aim is to make as much money from the magazine as possible. I will have a variety of features on these different artists. Some will be reviews of albums/singles, others will be focused articles on the people involved themselves, for instance an interview with Ed Sheeran, where the audience really feels like they’re getting to know him, due to the questions and answers which are being asked/given. There will also be articles based on ‘behind-the-scenes’ knowledge where the article will focus on the making of albums/singles, the writing of songs and life as a musician. This will interest most people as they will be finding out more about their favourite artists that they didn’t know before. The magazine will therefore pride itself on giving out unknown information as well as providing tips on new and upcoming artists that the reader may enjoy listening to. It will be a breath of fresh air for the music industry, as there is no magazine like this that focuses heavily on budding new musicians just as much as it looks at successful artists. The magazine will also aim to kick-start the careers of these artists that haven’t quite fully made it yet.

TYPICAL MAGAZINE CONTENTS: What will be in each issue? To fit with the theme of the magazine, there will be a huge variety of different contents in each issue of the magazine. The main reason for this is to again provide something for everybody in my magazine. Some people prefer interviews to find out more about specific people, however others prefer reviews to analyse existing music products. This also makes the magazine a much more interesting read than simply having 20 interviews with different people. Hopefully, this will make the reader see that it really is worth the money, because they’re getting a magazine full of contents. So some examples of contents from the magazine are interviews. As I’ve already mentioned, I will focus on a variety of different artists, so some of the interviews will be with established musicians and others will be with lesser/unknown artists. On these interviews, some will have a 3:1 ratio of images to text; however others will be 1:1. This is because some people prefer to have a lot of pictures to look at, whereas others prefer it when the interview has a lot to read about the person/group featured, because they did come there to find out information after all. The interviews will be split into two different types. The first type of interview will be one created by the magazine itself. I will write the questions which will be asked to the artist, based on what I think will appeal to the audience. The other type of interview will be a question & answers interview. This is where I will ask the readers to send in their questions, via various ways, and the best 5 or 6 of these will be chosen to be asked to the interviewee. There will be about a 4:1 ratio of regular interviews to Q & A’s in the magazine. This is not set in stone however and could easily change. Another type of article will be the featured news articles. Here, any big stories going on in the news to do with the music genre will be analysed. For instance, TV Shows such as The X Factor and The Voice nearing their climax would be analysed so that the magazine can give our verdict on who should win. A third type of article to be featured in my magazine will be reviews. There will be reviews of all sorts of things, for example individual songs, artists, festivals, albums and award ceremonies. This is so that the audience can hear what something is like, if they were considering purchasing it. At the base of each review, there will be a small section saying ‘If you like this artists you may also like…’ and three other lesser known artists will be listed. Many people in my questionnaire said that they wanted to hear about other artists they might not know about. This is one very good way of communicating this. My magazine will conclude with a quiz page over a double page spread, including things such as wordsearches, crosswords and spot the differences as well as 10-question quizzes. This will appeal to the slightly younger audience, as well as the audience who just like quizzes. This page will be very colourful and bright. Unlike other magazines, I have decided against giving away freebies every issue, because it came to my attention that I costs an awful lot to get hold of them in the first place, and although giving them away for free would definitely draw in more people, I think I would make a larger profit from the regular audience than I would from the regular audience + the ones that come just for the freebies, due to the cost of these in the first place.

READER PROFILE: Who would be my ideal reader? Ewan is 25 and lives in Salford, Greater Manchester. He’s been listening to all sorts of

different music all his life, after growing up in a packed house of six, where everyone was a

mad fan of a different genre of music. He’s grown up, being fed with music from classical to

dubstep. Ewan ALWAYS remains completely on point with the newest music to be released

and can always be trusted to tell his friends about what’s new in the industry. He uses

YouTube on a daily basis, always has his iTunes account stocked up with cash and has a full

premium Spotify membership. Ewan has a variety of hobbies, from attending regular music

festivals to playing guitar in the worship band at his local church; he really is the pinnacle of

what music is all about. He spent three years studying music at the University of

Manchester, whilst balancing his studies with a part-time job at HMV. Ewan has now earnt

himself a full-time management job there, having worked there for a total of six years,

saying:

“There’s no better job than when you work somewhere you love!” Ewan lets absolutely nothing get ahead of his passion for music, no matter what that may

be and is always insistent on finding more artists to really get his teeth into. His music really

reflects in the way he lives his life, as he tries to live it out to the full, making the most of

every single moment. He likes to think of the music as another limb as he is always nearby

to a speaker, playing music himself or attached to a pair of headphones, even in his sleep.

It’s his source of breath and is absolutely not afraid to let people know about it.

KEY STATISTICS: MALE: 57.9% FEMALE: 42.1% AGE: 18 – 29: 68% SOCIAL GRADE ABC1: 71% READERS WITH A ‘WIDE’ MUSIC TASTE: 82%

MISSION STATEMENT: What does the magazine aim to achieve?

Beat aims to share the knowledge of music in a way that suits anybody. The list of music

genres featured in the magazine is so wide that no matter what you like, there will be

something for you in every issue. There is absolutely no existence genre that isn’t covered

at some point in Beat magazine. The main goal is to provide the audience with information

about upcoming artists or budding home musicians, while still fuelling their passions for the

big-name stars. The priority really is to refuel and give even more power to the reader’s

passion of music. A big aim is for the reader to really extend their music taste and hopefully

try at least one new thing each issue that they wouldn’t usually consider trying out. Beat

will pride itself on the relationship with the reader, as we will ensure that the reader has an

input in the magazine by offering many opportunities throughout the magazine to send in

articles or ideas for the magazine. We want every reader to feel valued and to be able to

feel the pride of contributing something to the magazine. We want them to have an

emotional connection with Beat that will make them want to continue to buy it for years and

years to come.

STYLE SHEET FONTS: Masthead Font: BonJovi Size: 98pt STRAPLINE/SLOGAN: Font: Aharoni Size: 26pt

THE MUSIC FOR EVERYONE HEADLINES Font: Brittanic Bold Size: 48pt

INTERVIEWS COVERLINES Font: LateNoise Size: 36pt

DISCOVERING THE UNDISCOVERED MAIN TEXT: Font: Tahoma Size: 8-12pt DROP CAPS TEXT: Font: Comic Sans MS Size: 24-36pt PULL QUOTES TEXT: Font: Century Gothic Size: 36pt

‘THE BEST EXPERIENCE’

COLOUR SCHEMES: As my magazine is all about music variety, it will not have a constant colour scheme running through the whole magazine. However, there will be a constant colour scheme of blacks-whites and greys for the front cover. Many people in my survey said this colour scheme would appeal to them. This is why my logo is the colour that it is. It will give my magazine identity as it will be the same every issue. The blacks also create a sense of mystery, because you don’t know what’s going to be inside each

issue.