Question 2

Some have suggested that music magazines are generally aimed at male readers. To what extent would you agree with this? Provide examples to support your views.

On the whole I agree that music magazines are typically aimed at males, however there is some popular music magazines aimed at females, but they appeal to a much younger audience. For instance one of the most popular music magazines with a typically male audience is Q magazine with 75% of male readers and only 75% female, where as another popular music magazine is Top Of The Pops, which population of readers is mainly female dominated, with 86% female readers, and 14% male. An example of an ‘in-between’ magazine as such is Kerrang, with 57% of male readers and 43% female readers, which statistics show that even though its readership is pretty balanced on the gender side (which may seem strange for a magazine with such a aggressive theme) there is still a bigger percentage of male readers than female.

An example of evidence that Q is intended to appeal to the male gender is its use of red, black and white as its repeating colour scheme. Even though red can be viewed as a unisex colour the shade of red commonly used by Q is harsh and can display connotations of anger and danger, and black and white are binary opposites which creates contrasting atmosphere which you wouldn’t find in a female music magazine. Also the front cover typically includes an unsexualised image of a male, which would attract the male audiences. Interestingly, if there is a female on the cover they are always sexualised and viewed more as an object than a artist, and are generally viewed from the chest area up, different to the normal close up of the face when a male is on the cover. This highlights that the magazine is not aimed towards females because if they were to see this image it would not attract them to read the magazine, it also may make them angry at the magazines objectification of women. The front cover also contains aggressive imagery and the main artist commonly sports a sombre expression, all of which attracts the male audience. The font is being bold and ‘straight’ with no elaborate fonts is viewed is viewed as a more ‘male’ type of font and adds to the aggressive atmosphere.

Kerrang magazine could attract more of a female audience because even though it has frequent use of swearing and aggressive language and imagery which is usually viewed as a male trait, its images of males can be viewed as attractive to people of the female gender due to their ‘bad boy, rockstar’ image. The images aren’t as objectified as they are for women for example in Q, but there are still presented as more attractive than the sombre close up images of men in Q.  Not objectifying men is important because the magazine is also meant to appeal majorly to men as well. The fonts commonly used have a distressed style and there is common use of harsh words such as ‘warped’ which again implies it is directed towards males as they are looked upon as the more aggressive, violent gender, There is offers of poster which is viewed as typically used by female to demonstrate their loyalty to a music act. Kerrang magazine colour theme is also typically harsh colours such as blue, which symbolic sign and generally portrays male connotations.

Finally an example of a mainly female oriented magazine, Top of The Pops. This is one of the few music magazine aimed at females, but it has a noticeably younger audience than the other two magazines mentioned, possibly because as the females get older they transfer to the internet as there source of information, also priorities their money spending for other things (i.e clothes). Interestingly there is still sexualisation in this magazine particularly when males are on the cover since half of their success in music is based on looks, and the other half on music, unlike the rock genre when the success is mainly due to just the music.

To conclude male magazines are generally aimed at 20-30 year old male readers due to them being the most common demographic for buying music magazine.