MAGAZINES

Kerrang and NME.

 Magazine
• This is the front cover of our case study magazine
• It is published by
• Baure
• It first started in
• June 1981
 Info on Kerrang!
• Kerrang! Magazine for most people is a household name. You will either relate it to as
'that Goth mag', 'sell-out trash', or 'cutting edge' - whichever opinion you share of the
weekly rock magazine, it's been one of the longest running glossy publications in the UK
since it emerged from the pull-out pages of more mainstream magazines in the early 80s.
•
Throughout the life of Kerrang! it is quite clearly an extension of a commercial magazine.
This become more evident in the late 80s to early 90s when it was originally a Metal
magazine, featuring a vast array of new wave UK talent. Once the Glam rock scene
became big in USA, Kerrang! noticed the increase in record sales and decided to cover
more controversial styles which in the eyes of many are borderline alternative.
• From the slowly declining Thrash era of the late 80s, Kerrang! opted to aim its spotlight
more towards the up-and-coming rock sub-genres such as Grunge and alternative.
• Nowadays, the magazine is in a less stable position than during the Nu-metal (1999-2004)
era. But with the revenues of both the radio and TV station, the Kerrang! empire is able to
withstand a few subscription losses and progress even more.
Official Kerrang readership profile
 Contents
• News :This generally focuses on new competitions, Courtney Love’s latest act of ridicule, gig news, rock star
suicides, gossip and plenty of other cheery nonsense. Its all nicely balanced between the sub genres and you should
find the latest on the band your looking for. There are weekly features for the bigger (and unfortunately more
commercial) bands in this section , last week for example followed the excellent System Of a Down’s video shoot.
All is well written in suitably up beat themes keeping you interested even with bands you loath to destruction.
• Features These of course vary from week to week, but generally the staple diet of interviews, band profiles and
seasonal specialities remain. The depth here is really impressive with around about six pages dedicated to a band. A
few weeks ago they managed this much on the infinitely shallow Blink 182 which is a feat in itself I’m sure you’ll
agree. Many of the bands you read about here you’ll really hate, but this just increases the fun. The superficial
nature of Blink made superb reading, sure I’ll burn in hell before I listen to their music but it doesn’t stop reading
about them being hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
• Scumscene Just started, this area gives you the chance to broadcast you and your band to the world..
• Reviews This fairly obviously consists of album and gig reviews from typically varied bands. About 20 – 30 albums
and about five gigs are reviewed each issue, widely spanning the genres. These are given “K” ratings out of five:
K – Bollocks
KK – Average
KKK – Good
KKKK – Blinding
KKKKK – Classic
These are generally as accurate as you could get, written without bias for the style of the sub genre and where
possible picking up the new bands along the way
 Audience
• It is aimed at people in late teens or early 20’s that
are interested in rock and metal
• CirculationTotal circulation sales are 52272 (50128
in UK and republic of Ireland)
• Readership Profile . 15-24 year old readers (60% female, 40%
male) are sharp intelligent and rejoice in their individuality.
Typical of modern youth, media savvy and marketing-averse,
they are active consumers of computer games, media and
fashion. On average they buy 31 albums a year. The brands that
make the effort to talk to them in their language are rewarded
with enormous loyalty.
 Increasing number of readers
• Because kerrang is less mainstream and allows
more niche product within the subject it
covers the audience is therefore considered as
a niche market. This means its sales have risen
thus proving the long tail theory.
 Long tail theory.
• Basically the Long Tail is a way to describe niche marketing and the way it
works on the Internet. Traditionally records, books, movies, and other
items were geared towards creating "hits." Stores could only afford to carry
the most popular items because they needed enough people in an area to
buy their goods in order to recoup their overhead expenses.
• The Internet changes that. It allows people to find less popular items and
subjects.
• The long tail theory changes that as it concerns how, with the proliferation
of websites selling a variety of items including the likes of ebay, madbid
etc., it is thought that there are now more chances of getting rare, 'cult' or
niche items online. Indeed, with so much available online and so much
personalisation taking place with Web 3.0, it would appear to make sense
that this market is potentially as profitable as the mainstream market. This
is the 'long tail'
Long tail theory

Popular artist. Sell

popular products

Not so popular artists

with a cult following
which makes up for
the popularity and
smaller group of fans
 WEBSITE VIEWS
Kerrang- Estimated 284,300 visits over last 30 days. The number
of visits differs from visitors (or unique visitors) in that it
includes all visits from the same person (repeat visits).

NME- Estimated 3,396,200 visits over last 30 days. The number

of visits differs from visitors (or unique visitors) in that it
includes all visits from the same person (repeat visits).

This shows that because kerrang sell more magazines that NME
has a more technical audience that prefer to look online than
actually buy the magazine.
 Publisher
• Other Titles Published by this company are…
• Q
• Empire
• Heat
 Publisher
• The Publishing company is owned by and part
of ……..(or Independent!) it’s an independent
company.
• If independent, who is the owner when did
the company begin etc.. it has been privately-
owned and under management by the Bauer
family
 Bauer
• Have a look at what Bauer publish:
• Star perfomers: Empire up 4.5% year on year to 189,619; Arena
up 16.4% year on year to 29,374, but down on the previous six
months; biggest yearly riser was Golf World, up 19.2% to 35,787.
• Disappointments: Max Power down 34.3% year on year to
30,076; rock title Kerrang! down 32.1% to 52,272 while rival rock
titles were up; weekly lads' mag Zoo down 18.7% to 145,555;
FHM and Heat down 13.5% and 11.7% respectively; Q down
more than 20% year on year but narrowly held onto number one
spot in the music and film sector; other big fallers included Top
Santé Health & Beauty and Pregnancy & Birth, both down 24.5%
to 74,007 and 33,327 respectively.
 Magazine Content
• Insert picture of first issue or earliest issue and most recent issue available.
• How has the magazine changed in style and content?
There is a much more updated layout with bright colours that attract the audience. There are more
images, plugs, anchorage ect.
There is different types of music
there is free posters
• Why do you think that is?
To adapt to a 21st century audience
and attract the eye of more people
meaning more readers and essentially
more money for the magazine.

Which changes are due to changing audiences?

- type of music
- free posters
Which changes are due to new technology?
-layout
-image quality
-colours
 Biggest Rival
• The main rival of our case study magazine is Rock Sound
• It is Published by sonic publishing
• Its circulation is (NRS) Rock Sound 22527

Also, A large industrious battle took place when the likes of RAW
Magazine and Metal Hammer bi-weekly and monthly 'zines
challenged the Kerrang! crown. With Kerrang! being a weekly
publication it had to fill its pages more regular and shift copies faster
than its metal competition it was forced to jump ship and allow more
radio-friendly acts into its pages. When this happened, a huge
number of fans split and disowned the magazine forever, which
brought forth the likes of Terrorizer magazine, which supplied the
hungry needs of the extreme metal scene that were once loyal K!
readers.
 NME
• IPC Media is a leading UK consumer magazine publisher. Almost two in every three UK
women and over 44% of UK men read an IPC magazine. That's over 26 million UK
adults.
• IPC's diverse print and digital portfolio offers something for everyone. Our 80
magazines include What's on TV, Pick Me Up, Woman, Now, Marie Claire, In Style,
Woman & Home, Ideal Home, Nuts, Wallpaper*, Country Life, The Field, Rugby World,
Practical Boat Owner and Look, our latest high street fashion and celebrity weekly. Our
digital properties include NME.com, the third largest commercial music website in the
UK and housetohome.co.uk, the UK's first homes portal. IPC's brands are very simply
at the heart of the UK's cultural life
• IPC is owned by Time Inc., the publishing division of Time Warner Inc. Our business is
split into five distinct publishing divisions: IPC Connect, IPC Inspire, IPC Ignite, IPC
Southbank and IPC TX. Alongside these is Marketforce, the UK's leading magazine
distribution business.
• IPC employs over 2,200 people, and it's their creativity, innovation, talent and
commitment that drives our market-leading position in UK consumer publishing.
 History of NME
• History of the NME
• Close relations with the music industry - a tight-knit community of journalists, on friendly terms with
musicians, took part in the creativity of music scenes e.g. ‘Madchester’s artwork for Stone Roses etc.
• Realistic and gritty – hand-written, not stuffy (quite ‘unprofessional’), originally designed in the 70s to avoid
pretentiousness.
• Sharp and critical – Bryan Ferry’s ‘enemy’ (NME!) as they took exception to his aloof attitude even though they
actually really liked his music, Morrissey, punk ‘made’ the NME
• Connects with the underground – drugs being part of the workplace were a great surprise to ex-Woman’s Own
writer, Kate Tyler, sparked by the punk scene which was only properly recorded by the NME and nowhere else,
still manages to tap into scenes such as the early Stone Roses era which involved no press releases as they
owed much of their success to ‘word of mouth’.
• Issues – could be seen to glamourise drugs, used themes such as Nick Kent’s ‘doomed young poets and
romantic squalor’, youth suicide inc. Manic Street Preachers’ Richey Edwards
• Journalism – as important and vital as the music, advertised for ‘hip young gunslingers’, Morrissey and Chrissie
Hyndes are both musicians but worked or wrote for the NME, some of the writing in the 80s became more
complex, poetic and bordered on the pretentious.
• Changes – hippy period, punks (sharp and spiky –the only outlet for punk was the music press), became
politically-correct and ‘right on’ (The Stranglers were hated for sexism), the ‘independent voices’ were then
ditched in favour of industry favourites and became the ‘style bible’ for New Romantics, ‘Joy Division’ then
helped to make NME darker and more intellectual with complex, highly-wrought lyrics (Ian Penman and
‘intense young men in raincoats’), became anti-conservative, angry and very political in the 80s before the ‘hip-
hop wars’ split interest between genres, then went back to pop before being revitalised by developing and
inventing genres inc. ‘Madchester’ / focusing on new bands e.g. Kaiser Chiefs.
 NMT
• Piracy has a long-standing history and began in the area of
music piracy when Napster first appeared. This began a whole
string of sites including peer-to-peer, file sharing and torrent
sites that developed into more sophisticated operations such as
the likes of Limewire and then torrent sites such the Piratebay.

• More recently, the institutions have fought back with creative

ways of getting people to pay for pirated material. Services such
as Grooveshark and Spotify began to appear using the same
sort of financial backing as magazines to fund
themselves...advertising
 Web 2.0 and NMT
• Kerrang magazine website is a mixture of
news, new videos, podcasts, interviews,
reviews, whats in the actual magazine, links to
 Globalisation
• How buisness and trade becomes global- all over the world.
• Better access
• Bigger audience
• Smaller companies are taken over
• May have to re-brand to fit in with that particular country and customs
• Less trustworthy
• With magazines, you can 'outsource' which means that you can unite with
anyone worldwide to put together a global magazine team using websites like
these: Elance and Odesk
• Improves communication
• Forces prices down because the magazine is avaiable in lost of different countrie
• Owned by one person- means it can be bias as it’s there influence over the
publication.
 Globalisation and the long tail theory

• More globalisation makes the most popular

part of the long term theory even more
popular as the brand is getting bigger and
more world wide.
 Convergence
• The word 'convergence' refers to "the rise of digital communication in the
late 20th century (that) made it possible for media organizations (or
individuals) to deliver text, audio, and video material over the same
wired, wireless, or fiber-optic connections." (quoted from Wikipedia)

Many people believe that this is something that cuts down on the
'sensationalism' of the previous age where news channels and publishers
felt obliged to create dynamic (or 'hyped') material to keep its audience's
interest. Instead, people who consume all kinds of material are truly in
control of what they want to consume and how. Many believe that his
brings back the best characteristics of journalism: a love of storytelling,
clear, vivid language and a respect for history.