Complete Analysis Of a Music Magazine

‘Kerrang!’ the most predominant music magazine in the market, dating back 29 years and earning itself its name as biggest music weekly in the world over this time. Geoff Barton was the editor of the first edition for a one-time supplement for the ‘Sounds’ newspaper, this publication was 1981 covering the new era of heavy metal and British rock, since of which has been slightly changed but still is keeping the original intentions of the magazine. Large success lead to this monthly magazine becoming a weekly issue in 1987, only 6 years passed since production and they were able to gather enough popularity to start distributing on a higher demand. Throughout time Kerrang has been infamous to focusing on the new genres for example Slayer and Bon Jovi were considered as thrash, which was highly popular, but then this genre was castoff when grunge became big with the introduction of Nirvana even though they are very similar in terms of music. So Kerrang throughout history have kept their similar genres but kept moving on to stay modern and not become out dated, though some choices of genre were not popular whilst doing this, the beginning of ‘emo’ was not favoured by the majority and the magazine suffered for their substantial featuring on the ‘emo’ phase.

Overtime Kerrang has become the most recognisable due to the sheer amount of platforms it is on, Kerrang has their online website which is popular with most media distributors as of recent; however they also do organise tours, have their own radio broadcast, award ceremonies, and podcasts. The kerrang tour is a very large event with big named performers and special guests, for example Sum 41 headlining 2016’s and performing in places as small as University of East Anglia all the way to Manchester Albert hall. They have their own television channel, kerrang! TV, that shows a constant flow of music videos and news, video countdowns have been a popular feature with ‘top 50 anthems’ or other lists somewhat similar though fans are still in agony due to their favourite music videos censored due to rights on what’s shown.

From the media pack I’ve gathered that the average reader is 22 years old, which is beneficial to this music magazine as younger people are harder to keep in tune with due to the changes on opinions over time and low incomes they possess. Though the target audience has not changed throughout the years, the older generation still tend to buy the issues considering it’s what they have grown up with. Target audience kerrang is going for would be late teens to mid-twenties, this is evident through Kerrang’s style. The magazine has an anarchistic persona; this comes from the types of music featured and wants to go against the norm of magazine industry, where other music magazines are almost formal due to the editors looking to target a slightly older generation.