Music Magazine Industry Tasks Research

Classical Music Magazine

Classical Music is a trade magazine for the classical music profession. It co-sponsors the annual ABO/Rhinegold Awards for backstage work in music, held for the first time in January 2012 - and has correspondents in Great Britain and in New York. Its website includes news on the classical music industry. It is published by Rhinegold Publishing, and the editor is Kimon Daltas.

BBC Music Magazine

BBC Music Magazine is a monthly magazine. The first issue appeared in June 1992. BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the BBC was the original owner and publisher together with the Warner Music Enterprises during its initial phase. Immediate Media Company has been the publisher since 2012. BBC Music Magazine has also an edition in North America which was first published in March 1993. The magazine reflects the broadcast output of BBC Radio 3 being devoted primarily to classical music, though with sections on jazz and world music. Each edition comes together with an audio CD, often including BBC recordings of full-length works. The magazine's circulation is 37,530 and profits "are returned to the BBC". The magazine features articles on subjects such as the favourite conductor of professional conductors.

Codes and Conventions

The conventions of a classical music magazine are mostly the same in every magazine made by different publishers. Usually, the masthead is the biggest text on the cover. The colours are normally clean and classy, with no bright colours such as pink being used. Colours quite commonly used are gold and black, because these colours together show quite a premium style which fits the high class stereotype.

The main image usually relates to the main feature article of the magazine, with the image being in a medium or medium long shot. There is only one image on the front cover and a cover story about the specific artist and the artist is normally dressed up to look high class in gowns and suits. Some magazines use black and white images to give a vintage look but some use colour depending on the background. Sometimes the background is one colour so all the other features stand out.

Overall, the front cover is generally very organised and clean. It doesn’t use bright colours and only important text is placed on the front cover so it doesn’t feel too full up. This is all to appeal to the older target audience.

Readership Profile

Most classical magazines have a readership profile of both men and women aged 40 and above. This is because people of this age have grew up with this type of music and still enjoy it to this day whilst people of younger generations listen to genres such as rap. Classical magazines try to appeal to the audience by using colours often associated with the older generation, for example black and white. Using a monochrome colour scheme is often associated with the older generation because they read the newspaper and grew up with black and white forms of media.