Planning

As I am going to make a Hip - Hop magazine I am going to base it on one of the best selling Hip - Hop magazine around called Hip - Hop Connection.

After I researched Hip - Hop Connection I had a rough idea of what I wanted my front cover to look like. Then I realised that the idea I thought of would be even better because it would be fighting against the negative stereotypes, but this idea may be very time consuming and will need quite a bit of props, I may have to make time for this in order to get the best result.

Planning Through Research

While researching various magazines I noticed that the most popularly published music magazines are based round the Rock and Metal genres.

Within these magazines I also noticed that there are pages and articles dedicated to various other genres such as Rap/Hip - Hop and RnB.
For my music magazine I will have, in the contents page, an article based around rock music.

Planning

My music magazine is going to be based on the Hip - Hop genre.
I decided to use Hip - Hop because it is a genre which i am interested in, also because of the negative stereotyping based around Hip - Hop music and the Hip - Hop culture.

The Hip - Hop culture is made up of people from many different backgrounds, ethics and colours.
The hip - Hop culture is stereotyped as a bad group made up of mainly "Black" and "Asian" males. They are seen as troublemakers, drug dealers, criminals and such.

I am going to try and go against these negative stereotypes by showing how the true hip - hop culture really is. :)

Kerrang!

This is an article of the Kerrang! magazine, as you can see the main image is of Slipknot, which is a heavy metal band. The main image is a close up of a member of the band and covers up nearly all of the masthead because we already know it is Kerrang!

At the bottom of the magazine cover it says "slipknot" in a different font. The font is recognisable to many, if not all, Slipknot fans because it is iconographic of Slipknot.

Differences

The main and biggest differences are:

• The masthead - They are usually larger than the mastheads used on general magazines to attract attention. The mastheads on music magazines are sometimes partially covered up, like Kerrang!, this is based on the popularity of the magazine. Kerrang! magazine is very popular in Britain and is aimed at an audience which enjoy the rock genre of music.

• Main Image - The main image used on a music magazine is usually of a singer or band related to the genre of music that the magazine is based on. These images are done in a range of camera shots from close - ups to long shots.

• Articles/Headlines - The headlines and sub-headings are also music related and sometimes even quotes used by the band/artist used in the main image.

Use Of Language

The language used in music magazines is mainly informal, words are sometimes shortened and punctuation is missed out.
This is probably done because of the audience it is aimed at, which is teenagers.
Music magazines do this to attract the specific audience it is after. A Hip - Hop magazine which i have seen uses lots of very in formal language to attract the teenagers that are in to Hip Hop Music.

Music Magazine

Music magazines can attract a very wide range of audiences just by the genre of the music it is based on.

Some of the most popular music magazines in the UK are Kerrang!, Mojo and Q magazine. These magazines are all mainly based on the Rock genre.
Music magazines are mainly aimed at teenagers from the age range of 16 - 25, this is because teenagers enjoy music and end up being influenced by it.

There are many big differences between Music magazines and other magazines in general.
The most noticeable are probably the Mastheads and the Colour schemes.
Also the sub-headings are music based and related to singers, this is so the audience knows who or what the certain article of magazine will be about.