Music magazine front cover and contents pages analysis

Music Magazine Research

Vibe

Vibe is an American music and entertainment magazine founded by producer Quincy Jones. The publication mainly features R&B and hip-hop music artists, actors and other entertainers. The magazine's target demographic is mainly young, urban followers of hip-hop culture. Quincy Jones launched Vibe in 1993 in partnership with Time Inc. Originally, the publication had been called Volume before co-founding editor, Scott Poulson-Bryant gave it the name Vibe. Vibe Magazine was known for the creative direction of their covers. R&B singer Mary J. Blige repeatedly made the cover of Vibe, with countless articles following her career. In 2014, the magazine moved online-only.


R&B magazine codes and conventions

On R&B magazines the masthead is usually bold at the top of the magazine (which catches the reader’s eye before anything else) and rationally the main image of the cover star, partly covers the masthead. On Vibe magazine the masthead is in capital letters which makes it stand out even more and it’s also the biggest text on the page. The fact that they can afford to cover part of the masthead shows how well known the magazine is because they can cover part of it and people still know what the magazine is.

The background colour of most issues of Vibe is predominantly neutral, which brings more attention to the cover star because there isn’t a background to distract the reader from the main image.

R&B magazines demographic are both males and females which is shown on the cover since there aren’t any ‘stereotypical’ boy or girl colours (for example the use of blue and pink), in this issue they use red which is seen as a gender neutral colour. The colour red has connotations of passion, love, seduction, violence and on this cover we see the artist ‘Nelly’ topless which links in with the theme of the colour red since it he is looking quite seductively at the camera. Another reason why he is topless is that it can attract the audience since ‘sex sells’. Nelly also is covered in black writing which can symbolise being heavily tattooed which is a stereotype of rappers. The colour red can also be a denotation of violence which is also another stereotype of rappers and rap culture, because red is a very powerful colour which is effectively used.

The language used in R&B magazines is also related to the target demographic since they would use some slang and an informal register, which would be aimed at youths/ teenagers because R&B culture/ hip hop culture is very popular with young people.  

The cover lines on an R&B magazine have some link to the featured artists of the magazine because the artist attracts the chosen target audience which is the younger generation. For example Kanye West is an icon in the R&B industry so if he was on the cover/ had an article written inside the magazine, this would attract many people to the magazine because he is so well known.

Readership profile

A readership profile is the people who read or are thought to read a particular book, newspaper, magazine, etc. Vibes readership profile would tend to be young people aged 15-30 who are interested in the R&B industry and it is also gender neutral, stereotypically the readers might be people of colour/ African American decent.  

Contents page analysis

The contents page of the magazine has a picture of Nelly who is the main focus of the magazines issue. The image used is a close up shot of Nelly in which he is almost holding the camera which gives off the affect that he’s trying to touch the audience which gives it a personal touch; it may also mean that he wants people to feel closer to him, and know more about him on a personal level as connoted by the closeness of the camera angle. In the photo he is also the only image on the page which makes it the focus of attention. They have used their ‘V’ logo on the top left hand side of the page, it’s bold and black which does draw some attention because it’s a stand out colour compared to the rest of the page which is in blue tones. The contents information of what is going to be featured in the magazine is in fairly small font but the main headings are in a white colour so they are brighter and stand out against the rest of the colour palette, so if someone were to just skill through the page, they would notice the main points.
This contents page isn’t like the stereotypical layout of a contents page, firstly it is all compact into one page which is uncommon because usually they have a double page spread that include an array of images and commonly more text, Vibe magazine have kept it very simplistic, using a very minimalistic style to create a very sleek page which makes it very clear for the reader to know where to look. The fact that they have used a very non-generic layout makes them stand out from other magazines because they are different also hip-hop and R&B music is usually classed as quite alternative because it isn’t the most popular genre, so for this magazine to not follow the regular codes and conventions of a contents page shows how it is an alternative genre.