Genre Analysis

I have decided to undertake the print media brief and therefore my genre analysis will be on music magazines.  To do an accurate analysis of music magazines you must also understand the genres within music whether that be Rap, Hip Hop, Dance, Rock, Rave and R&B. not only this but you will also have to understand the sub genres within the main genres for example within Rap there is Crunk, Grime, mainstream, Heavy and Independent. Within Rock there is Folk rock, Heavy Metal, Screamo, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock and Lovers Rock. There is also a hybrid Genre which is when you combine two or more genres of music together an example of this would be a American Rap group known as Fort Minor who have fused Rock and Rap together within much of their music.

Different magazines will stick to different genres within the music industry for example Kerrang one of the most popular music magazines in the UK; it has a very specific audience of 16+ male audience that are interested in Rock music.  It has a very unique house style which allows the reader to automatically notice that the genre that the magazine represents is Rock. 

Flavour Mag

This is a magazine with a different ethos, instead of focussing on one genre or sub-genre of music it instead focusses on what is 'fresh’ and ‘hot’ within the UK, this means that the house style is fairly plain so that it can be vastly edited to accommodate whatever genre of music it is focusing on within the issue. For example the two different front covers on show here are two very different genres the image of Alexandra Burke is the genre of Pop whereas the image the right is of the artist Chip who is one of the leading artist or Front men of the genre Grime.

In conclusion a lot can be gathered from the style and layout of a magazine as to which genre or what its main aim within the industry is to achieve and when I come to deciding which genre of music or what the aim of my magazine will be.