Q Magazine Analysis

General

Q magazine is produced and published by Bauer Media Group.


According to the Bauer Media Group website the target audience of Q Magazine is 'composed of passionate, engaged and open minded music fans driven to continually discover new music - and to use this lust for discovery to influence their friends'. The target audience of the magazine is also affluent, with 75% male readers and 25% female readers.


One copy of the magazine costs £3.99. A 6 month subscription to Q Magazine costs £23.94 and a 12 month subscription costs £47.88.


The magazine is published once a month in the UK.


According to the Press Gazette website the circulation of Q Magazine is 80,418.


The monthly circulation revenue stream of Q magazine is £320,867.82. The total monthly revenue stream for advertising is £270,931. This is made up of 4 double page spreads, 17 full page adverts, 1 outside back cover, 6 half page adverts, 62 bound inserts and 3 loose inserts.
There are different costs to place an advert in Q magazine depending on the size of the advert that you want to place.

• Double Page Spread - £17,396
• Full Page - £9,156
• Page Outside Back Cover - £11,902
• Half Page - £4,578
• Bound Insert - £65
• Loose Insert - £45

The Cover

The title of the magazine is Q. The magazine was originally named Cue, as in to cue music and get it ready to play, but it was changed to Q so that it wouldn't be mistaken for a snooker magazine. One other reason why it was given the name Q was because the use of a single letter would make the magazine stand out and look more prominent on news stands.

The masthead is in plain red and white and is a very simple font. This shows that the magazine is quite sophisticated and suitable for the target audience. The fact that the masthead is partly covered by the artist Tinie Tempah shows that the magazine is established and famous enough to be recognised without the masthead being fully visible.

The strapline of the magazine, which is also partly hidden behind the image of Tinie Tempah, is "Discover Great Music". In similar fashion to the masthead, the strapline is partly hidden by the main cover image and this continues the idea that the magazine is established and know well enough for it's readers to not need to see the full strapline.

The main image on the cover of the magazine is of English Rapper Tinie Tempah. In the image he is looking directly at the camera, whilst wearing dark sunglasses and adjusting the top button of his shirt. He has a straight face in the picture and this could show that he is serious about his music. He is wearing clothes that would fit in with his genre of music, and what the target audience of the magazine would also be wearing. This could be one factor that makes the public buy the magazine, because they can relate it to themselves.

The content that is promoted by the cover lines is the fact that this months magazine is a "25th anniversary collector's edition". The cover line at the bottom of the front page also promotes the "145 albums to discover".

The typeface on the front cover of the magazine looks handwritten which makes it look like it is very different to other magazines, and grabs your attention. There is also bold, dark text to highlight what the main feature in the magazine is about. There isn't that much text on the cover of the magazine; there is the name of the artist who features on the cover, the cover lines at the top and bottom of the page and the list of artists that are featured in other special editions of the magazine. The text on the cover is all in plain black. The signature of Tinie Tempah on the front is white, which makes it stand out from the rest of the text, making him seem important. The text in the footer is also gold  which shows that this is a feature worth looking at. The text on the cover of the magazine is also very formal. There isn't any use of colloquial language which makes the magazine appear to be serious about the music they are reporting about. 


This issue of the magazine is quite different to other music magazines as there is one big picture with very little text on the cover. If you compare it to Vibe magazine you will see that there is a lot of text on there, and not very much on Q. There is also a gold and black coloured border around the edge of the magazine which isn't on any other music magazines that I have seen. The distinctive feature on the cover of the magazine is the signature of Tinie Tempah. You wouldn't normally see an artist's signature on the cover of a music magazine. You could say that this, along with the fact that the magazine is the 25th anniversary collectors edition, is the unique selling point of the magazine. This is similar to the rest of the covers that make up the 25th Edition Collectors Edition, and you can see that there is a double page spread at the beginning of the magazine showing each of these.


Inside


There are 170 pages inside the magazine.
There are 36 pages of adverts inside the magazine.

The types of products that are advertised in the magazine are:

• Music / Albums
• Clothing
• Video Games
• Snacks
• Aftershave
• Cars
• Drinks
• Upcoming Concerts / Gigs

The features/article topics in the magazine are:

• Features - Interviews / Main Stories
• QMail - Letters from readers
• Q50 - The month's essential songs
• Now - Interview with artists on the road
• Subscribe - Subscription offer
• Q Quiz
• Last Requests - The last great record YOU heard
• The Q Review - Review of new albums / live events

There are 36 double page spreads in the magazine. These mainly consist of the interviews with 25 different artists, such as Muse, Arcade Fire, Elbow, Noel Gallagher and Coldplay, which is the main feature of the magazine. The other things that make up the double page spreads are album reviews, live concert reviews, and overview of the Q awards.

The only advertorial that appears in the magazine is called 'Walls of Sound'. The article is written by Q and is listed as a 'Q Promotion'. It is promoting Monitor Audio's new sound frame system. It fits in with the magazine as it is to do with music and is something that readers of Q magazine might be interested in buying.

The magazine achieves a unified house style by keeping a very plain colour scheme. The backgrounds of nearly all of the articles are either black or white. The Q logo also features regularly through the magazine, usually being at the top of the articles and other features. The mode of the address and language stay very formal throughout the magazine which helps keep a unified house style.

This house style is appropriate to the target audience as they are described as being 'affluent'. This is the sort of language and colour schemes they would expect in a magazine, and not one full of colloquial language and different colours.