Magazine research for Q: Cover 1

The first thing we looked at as a class was the answering 5 questions surrounding music magazines

1) What title of music magazines do you know?
Q, Kerrang! NME, Mojo, Smash hits, BBC music, Rolling Stones, Mix magazine, Metal Hammer, Opera now, and several specialist magazines for those who play a musical instrument.

2) What categories do you know? 
Rock, Pop, Classical, Jazz, Opera, R&B, Rap, Hip hop.

3) How much do they cost?
£2-5 on average

4) Where are they available?
Newsagent, supermarket, garage(petrol stations), online

5) When are they published?
Weekly (NME) and Mothly (Q)

Background information
Q was originally called Cue, but this was changed because people thought it was a snooker magazine. It was then called Q because a dj 'queues' up a track.
The editor of Q is Paul Rees, who was the editor of Kerrang! before moving to Q.
In 2007 the circulation of Q was 130,179 and was first published in 1986. It is owned by a company called Bauer.
In their magazine, it often features a 'top 100' list, for example, top 100 singers or band and songs.
Q is monthly, costing £3.99, and is also available to order online(which can also be subscribed costing less than shop prices) It is linked to the Q awards, which also has their own music channel.
The main colour schemes are often: Red, white and black, which usually has an additional colour, for example, the band Muse had a blue colour aswell as red, black and white whereas Take That has gold.

Front cover analysis:
The first thing we notcie about the magazine is the masthead, which is usually at the top left because when it is placed on shelves in shops you're most likely to see the top left hand side first. Any extra information is called a puff, which on here is written in black and gold. The barcode is at the bottom of the page because it is the least important part of the front page, because we read from the top left down, the more important information is towards the top. On here the sub-heading 'Back for good?' is an enigma code because it is related to Take That as it is one of their well known songs. The image of Take That show the togetherness of the group and they are unified through their clothing. At the bottom, it highlights bands such as: Arcadefire/ Eminem & Jay-Z/ Linkin Park, this is because Take That on the front may not appeal to everyone as their genre is quite pop, but because it says Eminem and Jay-Z it may attract those who like the genre of rap. Finally, the magazine front cover looks formal or business like because of the plain white background and the colour texts use, there also isn't that much information on the front cover, meaning that most of their information will be on their content page.