Magazine Presentation

Kerrang! Magazine Case Study

Kerrang! Magazine

This is the cover of the latest issue of Kerrang! Magazine .

Kerrang! is published by Bauer Publishing.

It was first published in 1981

Audience

Bauer Media states that the audience profile fro Kerrang! is: ‘Individually minded, independent of thought and musically experienced, an audience defined by attitude, passion and loyalty.’

This chart shows both the circulation and readership of Kerrang!

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Here is the official Kerrang! Readership profile.

Other Magazines Published by Bauer Media

Q Magazine

Pop

Empire

Grazia

Publisher Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s largest privately owned publishing Group. The Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations.

Bauer further expanded in the UK with the purchase of Emap Consumer Media and Emap Radio in 2008 to become the UK's biggest publishing group.

It was founded in 1875 and is now one of the biggest publishing companies around with it’s large international span. It’s based in the following countries:

•Germany•USA•Spain•France•Austria•Poland•Portugal•Romania•Hungary

•Czech Republic•Mexico•China•Russia•Slovakia•United Kingdom•Nigeria

Magazine Content

8 May 1993 issue No. 44226/01/11

The graphics have moved on with the years as technology has progressed, however, the conventions of both issues have stayed the same. They both have anchorage and menu bars and the logo. The logo has changed dramatically as better technology has come along. The logo has gone from being cartoon and comic like to a more edgy look of simple black and white with a look of smashed glass. The type of artists and colours that are used change as the audience changes as they need to keep their audience interested in their magazine.

Advertising/SponsorshipKerrang! Magazine uses it’s radio station to advertise the latest issue. Kerrang! Are sponsored by Relentless Energy Drink on some occasions. Together they create a yearly tour which takes in around 13 UK cities.Convergence has enhanced Kerrang!’s popularity as it’s many different medias will bring in different audiences and all of them will be connected up to social networking sites such as Facebook which their radio uses everyday to get the audience more in touch in a way that will not cost them and they advertise this more than they do with texting and calling in.One example of synergy that they use is when they embed videos in to their website. They use these videos to show interviews and also the latest music videos of the hottest bands.

Web 2.0 and NMTKerrang!’s website is similar to an internet magazine in the way that it has interviews with bands and competitions on there too. However, to add to that there are different sections of the website for different products that they produce, for example, they have a section specifically for the magazine. In this section you get to see the front cover of the magazine and the two main articles in photo form and then it gives you a brief outline of what to expect in the latest issue. They also have a Twitter, Facebook and MySpace account which helps their audience get in touch with them. To make it more digital than just articles they have video interviews and also they post latest music videos and the latest tracks from the biggest bands.The physical magazine will have the best articles will be published and all the others will be posted on their website. The website has the use of videos which no paper format magazines have which is an added bonus. This is them synergising with other types of media. Kerrang! is now a brand name that has many different publications. They have Kerrang! Magazine, Kerrang! Radio and Kerrang! TV and their website backs all of this media up.

This is Kerrang!’s home page

This is Kerrang! Magazine’s home page

The futureIf I was the editor of Kerrang! I would not change the type of magazine it is and I would still focus on type of music it caters for. I would only add similar music genres to the list if one became very popular with our target audience. Kerrang! has changed over the times as it has moved from a metal and punk magazine to a more softer emo and pop punk magazine. By doing this it has gained a larger female audience than it once had. In the past it has been a more of a male audience. In the next five years I think Kerrang! is just going to keep on growing and growing until it reaches its high. I don’t think it will die out for a while as it has converged and synergised so well with various media’s and collaborating with other companies.

Research on Audience History

Has the audience undergone any significant changes? Why? How? What are they? Does it change how audience’s use, benefit from or enjoy the magazine (uses and gratifications

theory)?

The audience has not really changed, only grown in a sense. Over the years Kerrang! has changed the genre of music it focuses on by adding to the genres they already focus on. By doing this they have reached a new audience; females are now more interested in Kerrang! They have managed this by having the emo stereotype as one of their focuses as a audience member. I don’t think this has changed how people use or benefit from the magazine. They may have lost some audience members from when they focused more on metal music but in the long run they have gained new members by introducing pop/punk.

Is there anything that has or could affect interest in your subject area?

The music scene has been facing tragedy since illegal downloading became possible. Singers aren’t making as much money as they used to even if they are at the top of the charts. The charts used to go on how many CD’s had been bought but now as hardly anyone is willing to go out and buy a CD they rely on downloads to create the charts now. At one point Radiohead allowed their album to be legally downloaded and didn’t specify what price they wanted their customers to pay. This is a sign that the music industry is becoming desperate. They will do anything to get they money they need to survive, like Radiohead have shown. Another singer who has took the fall is Lily Allen; she has left the industry out of her own free will as she sees it as a dead end for her. She won’t have been getting what she wanted out of it so in most peoples eyes she is doing the right thing and is now getting money out of TV programmes and creating her own clothes line. I don’t think that CD’s will come back into the picture; it is always going to be downloads whether it is legal or illegally done.

Has the magazine changed (or adapted) its style or content? You might take a look at a range of covers to detect what type of

photograph is dominant.

8 May 1993 issue No. 442 26/01/1103/01/2007

These are a few issues of Kerrang! One from it’s early years and two from its more recent years. The photographs used are all the same style: the artists of the main feature article. They also use all the conventional techniques of using a mid shot. Even one of the latest issues that has seven different artists on the cover still uses mid shots.

Does it have a central purpose i.e. passing itself off as a 'definitive guide', creating a social space for a particular social

group, offering you a lifestyle choice etc.?

Kerrang! gives the emo scene social space as it focuses on them as one of the target audiences. It offers them a lifestyle by showing them the way into the emo scene. It gives people something to follow, trends to follow, music to follow. It focuses on the music they will like as the emo scene is focused around music. In most cases music is their life and Kerrang! touches on this element.

The stereotypical emo world

Have sales and web traffic increased or decreased over the years?

In an article on Media Guardian it compared all music magazines and told us who was falling year-by-year and who was growing. It said: ‘Bauer's Kerrang! leapfrogged Metal Hammer to take fifth spot with a respectable 4.5% uplift in year-on-year circulation to 42,967. The title fell 2.4% period on period.’ However, beforehand it said: ‘IPC Media's NME, which was the only title in the sector to report a double-digit year-on-year fall, had a circulation of 32,166 in the second half of last year, a 5% fall on the previous six months.’ This just shows how well Kerrang! is doing compared to it’s major rival NME.

The graph below shows how Kerrang!’s web traffic has increased over the past year. The website had its peak time in the summer of 2010 which is understandable as more people will be off work and off school or college. But what the graph does show us is that overall Kerrang! has increased their web traffic as in February 2010 they only had 10,018 visitors and now in February 2011 they have 22,285 visitors.