Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

By Estelle Naughton

• Bauer Media is a media company who seem to enhance the musical aspect but more towards radio stations and not music magazines, such as 4music and absolute radio. However, it also contains Q magazine which is a very successful and current music magazine and is familiar with most people, which has influenced the layout and context of my magazine as of the indie artists featured in the magazine. Bauer media may be more suited to my magazine as it suggests that successful and recognisable magazines of the music industry but also other magazines are published by Bauer. I believe Bauer media would be the most suitable media institution for my music magazine as Q are published by Bauer, and my magazine was influenced strongly by Q and other well-known and leading magazine which aren’t produced by Bauer.

• Although my magazine isn’t identical to Q magazine and its layout, some aspects of Q magazines’ layout has been applied to my magazine and are demonstrated on my contents page. Despite not having my magazine masthead in the primary optical area as I thought it would distract the audience away from the ‘contents’ masthead as my magazine masthead is a word and not a letter such as Q magazine, it is still visible in the weak fallow area, which wasn’t an original idea to place the masthead on the contents page, but I believe it works well. The main influence Q’s layout has had on my magazine is the images and their placement, such as having the main image enlarged and then a secondary image with a review. I also took inspiration for the review title ‘A REVIEW’ as in ‘Q REVIEW’ as my magazine masthead is ‘ACAPELLA’, I don’t believe it has much of an impact as it may come off laid back saying that it’s just a review. Lastly, Q inspired me to include regular features which make the magazine look professional and similar to a real music magazine. As above, I took inspiration from ‘Q MAIL’ and attempted to make it my own by using ‘A mail’, and because the wording is slightly incorrect for it to just be mail; it suggests its mail for the magazine. I tried to duplicate the way Q has their own fan mail and reviews, but because my masthead is ‘ACAPELLA’ it may not have come across that way.

• On the other hand, IPC Media publish chatty and weekly magazines like Heat and LOOK that are quite colloquial and connect with the audience. Alternatively, they also publish NME which I used as part of my research before constructing ideas and thoughts that may later be applied to my magazine. Despite using NME to research before actually making my magazine, I don’t believe many traits of NME as represented and duplicated in my magazine, despite the informal textual approach that Q also has.

Overall, I believe my media product would be best suited the Bauer Media products as one of the main magazines which I researched before creating my own magazine, which is Q is published by Bauer Media and certain aspects of Q shine through in my magazine and I believe my magazine would be most successful is it was published, especially by Bauer Media.