Magazine Research: BBC Music Magazine

BBC Music Magazine Front Cover

 BBC Music Magazine is a magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom by BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the BBC. Reflecting the broadcast output of BBC Radio 3, the magazine is devoted primarily to classical music, though with sections on jazz and world music. Each edition comes with a free audio CD, often including BBC recordings of full-length works. Being a niche-market magazine, BBC Music has a much more specific audience to appeal to, thus making it easier to appease readers. Judging by the front cover (FC) and its content, the magazine encompasses strictly classical, jazz and world music only. The magazine’s masthead consists predominantly of the word ‘Music’, but typed ‘Music’, which highlights the word ‘us’, which interacts with readers and directly involves them. This is a good way of spreading the brand’s popularity and reputation.

The centre-image features a modernly famous Russian composer, ‘Gergiev’, a probable recognisable figure in the classical-music world. An immediate attraction for me on the page was the use of the illuminated ‘Free CD’ in the top-right corner of the page. This refers to the advertised CD at the bottom left hand corner of the page, which as a tradition, comes free in every issue of BBC Music. Another aspect of BBC Music’s magazine is the simplistic and bold black and white theme of the FC. In this issue especially, the image of the Russian composer contributes to this black and white theme, which in my opinion emphasise the integrity of his non-black and white face (expression). This FC features a cover-line that isn’t as emphatic as other music magazines or newspapers, but links directly to the centre-image. The cover-line is ‘Gergiev Arrives!’, supported by a tagline that elaborates on the main cover story of the FC, which is ‘as London braces itself for the fiery Russian, we grab a rare interview’. The masthead’s tagline appears above the masthead on this FC, contrary to many other magazine covers that feature a tagline below the masthead. Tagline’s generally attempt to make the brand appear more prestigious, like here where the tagline states ‘the world’s best-selling classical music…’ – this further appeals to the niche-market that is classical music fanatics.

This image, as a whole, is a little more congested than the previous ‘Q’ FC, but this may be perhaps the appealed-to market would be interested in ALL of this information, as it’s target-specific, whereas Q is a lot more broad and needs to be a little more ambiguous in their cover-lines.

As a whole, the magazine cover is beautifully crafted in my opinion, as there’s an equal balance when regarding the text/graphic ratio. The colour scheme and magnificent photograph are key players in creating an overall astounding piece of editorial design. I will borrow highly from this magazine cover.

Magazine Contents Page Research: BBC Music

BBC Music's Contents Page

 BBC Music’s contents page was difficult to locate on the internet, and there was no online reading version available, so I have found a photograph on Google Images that shows a BBC Music contents page.

Similarly to Q magazine’s, this contents page features a double-page spread encompassing a variety of photos of different sizes, and  features number references on the images that refer readers to specific articles. Similarly also to Q’s contents page, the magazine features a prominent review section that can be seen advertised at the bottom of the right-hand page, which reviews a classical music album – further appealing to the intended market audience. You can see that the shown contents page is not in relation to the previously shown front cover, as the ‘cover-story’ on the contents page (Andre Previn) does not match up to the former cover-story (‘Gergiev Arrives!’). The photograph of the cover-story on the contents page is more dominant than other image as it has been edited to appear as the main feature of the magazine. This contents page features a ‘buzzword’ almost in the top right-hand corner of the page, but instead of ‘free’ or ‘now’, it says ‘subscribe’. This magazine’s contents page is separated into ‘features’ and ‘every week’, which separate the new, unfamiliar articles to the usual articles that readers may actually be searching for. This makes it much easier for readers to establish what they want to read in the magazine, which contribute to an overall more comfortable read for any audience.

As I’m not a classical music enthusiast, I don’t feel greatly interested by the contents page, as it’s full of classical music-themed information, but I can imagine it would be very contextually stimulating for lovers of the genre. Despite not being interested in the information, the graphics and photographs impel me and perhaps other audiences to delve into the article, as the contents page is well-designed.

 Magazine Double-page Spread Research

Double-page Spread: BBC Music

 The above double page spread of BBC Music’s magazine is not date-aligned with the contents page or front cover, but it gives a feel for the design and approach of BBC Music’s creators. An aspect of this double page spread that I found most appreciable was the photograph that spans across both pages, which clearly interlinks the two pages. The initial ‘Y’ that’s used on only the one side of the page represent the article as one large article, again linking the two pages. along with the consistent text. There is a slight symmetry in the graphic placement on the two pages – with the image on the left-hand side of the page appearing in a similar position to the gold-boxed quote that appears on the opposite page. This quote is placed to summarise the attitude of the writer or interviewees of the subjected article, which could be used to further appeal to readers that are ‘scanning’ through the magazine. The colour of the graphic (rectangle) is in correlation with the predominant colours of the featured picture.

The featured picture is a direct portrayal of the story about the idea that there’s not enough children involved with classical music – specifically choirs. A tagline (‘As the number of young people…’) is placed below a cover-line (‘Last Choirs Standing’) over a more blank part of the image, which conveys that the two are linked, as they overlap. The top right-hand corner of the page features a page description/title and states which type of article the page shows – whether it’s a ‘feature’ or ‘weekly’ article.

On the whole, I really like the colour coding of this page and think simplicity pulls through. The sophisticated aesthetics compliment the sophisticated genre and article, and if I were interested in choral music, I think this would be incredibly readable.