Analysis Of Magazine Sales

'NME', formally known as 'New Musical Express' and Kerrang face big problems as the consumer magazine sector suffered a joint circulation staggering drop of nearly 10% in the first half of this year (2009). NME, which was overtaken by Future Publishing monthly Metal Hammer from mid 2008 for the first time averaged a circulation of around 40,948 from January to July. Comaparing this with sales from the same time period in 2008, sales had dropped by an immense 27.2%.

Bauer Media's 'Kerrang!' has managed to keep their sales slighlty better than NME, but only just. Now also overtaken by Metal Hammer, Kerrang! saw its average sales fall 28.3% year on year to 43,253. Metal Hammer lost 5.2% sales year on year, down to 46,004.

Bauer Media's Q remains the market leader despite losing 11.5% of its sales year on year, down to 100,172. Q's Bauer stablemate Mojo also lost sales, down 8.1% year on year to 97,722. But Q's lead over Mojo has been reduced to just 2,450 compared with 6,807 a year ago.

Future Publishing's Classic Rock was the only paid-for music title to record a year-on-year increase, up 5.5% to 70,301. Classic Rock closed the gap on IPC's Uncut, which was down 12% to 76,526. In the first half of last year Uncut's lead over Classic Rock was 20,293. Now it is 6,225.
Channelfly Enterprises's free music monthly The Fly remains the sector leader with an average distribution of 107,771, up 2.4% year on year.

Overall, the music sector's combined circulation of 582,697 was down 9.4% year on year and 5% on the last six months of 2008.


My Analysis of the sales:

It is clear that over the last year or so, magazines sales have dropped a considerable amount, it is important that there are a varied number of music magazine products that all people can relate to, whether they favour heavy metal or popular music there should be something out there for everyone.

Kerrang! and NME are one of the top music magazines in the industry which makes decreasing sales hard to understand. They need to maintain the funky fresh unique qualities of the magazine that they had when sales were at their highest.

Semiotic Analysis Of 'Top Of The Pops' Music Magazine

This is a typical example of a successful and eye catching magazine cover, not only does it contain vibrant bright colour to attract buyers but it also has a picture on the front of two very successful celebrities in the media industry, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. Immediately the magazine will appeal to its target audience, capturing the eyes of those young teens out there that see Vanessa as a beautiful role model and Zac as a typical teenage heart throb. Looking at this particular cover i would say that it appeals to girls more than boys, purely because of all the information and goodies the magazine has to offer. For example: 'Sexy Hollyoaks Hunks' with an image of the Hollyoaks stars topless. Furthermore, it is clear that the magazine wants to target girls from the age of around 11-15, although the Disney characters appeal to younger ages, other articles may not be appropriate. The cover also includes a slight insight of an article inside, 'DANNY: ''I'M NOT CONFIDENT NAKED'', this will attract the girls and encourage them to want to read more, they don't give away too much but they don't give away too little, its the perfect amount to have a teen hooked on and left wanting to read more.

Top of the Pops is already a music show on TV, therefore buyers are able to look at the title and immediately relate the product back to what they may have seen before. The title gives away that the majority of the information will be based on pop music, luring in readers that listen to that genre. It's a well known TV show, therefore popularity for this magazine is bound to be high. Although there is a Top Of The Pops TV show, the title is not in the same font as 'Top Of The Pops' is on the show, audiences may not immediately relate it to the programme, however this may be their aim.

There are quite a few images on the front cover of this particular magazine, i think this is an advantage for the magazine. The target audience that the magazine is aimed at can relate to lots of fun, bright and colourful images of celebrities from movies like 'High School Musical', programmes like, 'Hollyoaks' and world wide singers like 'Leona Lewis'. I think it is important for the young readers to have something to look at, the more images there are, the more information their is bound to be on celebrities that they aspire to. The varied use of images gives the magazine a contrast and shows the readers that its not all just about reading into music, but also musical movies and other types of media as well, however music still being the obvious central theme.

The contrast of colours on the front cover immediately grabs your attention, these are considered as quite feminine colours again emphasising the products target audience and appealing to those young teens. The contrast of colours helps separate different articles and helps to vary the information so the reader is aware of the magazines diversity and that it focuses on a variety of different articles and people. They not only use different contrasting colours but they also use lots of different fonts to accompany each article that they are advertising, for example: - They have included articles on the two high school musical stars and decided to include the original film logo instead of putting the film title in their own font, this works to the products advantage as buyers are able to recognise the film by it's famous well known logo title. Another example is the '5 sexy Hollyoaks hunks' headline, they have put the font in white, this contrasts with the colour of the 'hot' celebrities skin colour, showing that they are tanned and good looking, again tripping the readers into buying the magazine. They have outlined the white font with black so that the headline stands out even more, as white can easily get lost on a page and go unnoticed.

The magazine includes a good variety of articles on the front page as well as inside. From the cover they are able to establish the target audience and are also able to see whether they would appeal to the particular subjects the magazine is going to talk about. However, for most young teenage girls, it seems that at least some articles in the 'Top of the pops' magazine would catch the eye of a potential reader, even if others didn't, and this shows how significant it is to have diversity in a magazine product. The range of articles displayed on the front page give the reader the impression that they wont get bored, there's certainly enough to read and do and enough interactive competitions that they can take part in if they chose to do so.

I feel that this product is highly successful in appealing to its main target audience and portraying just how informative and fun it can be to read. The use of colour, typography, images, slogans, teasers and competition prizes helps to encourage the reader into exploring the product more. I feel that this product has the potential to appeal to a wider age range by including articles that may attract older audiences, for example: - An interview with a popular artist of today such as Cheryl Cole or Alexandra Burke.