Research Task - Magazine Newsstand Task

As a part of the research task, in class, as preparation for our own music magazines, we were instructed to find newsstands which had music magazines. Therefore, I had to go out and find a newsagent which sold Magazines. As a result to this, I was instructed to visually analyse the distribution of magazines and how they are presented to the public. The newsagent that I chose offered a wide variety of magazines which was useful for me as this way I was able to see how so many magazines were displayed and presented to the target market. After taking a close look at the presentation of the music magazines on the newsstands, the first thing that came to my attention is that the masthead of all the magazines were visible. This is deliberate in order to allow the customers to find the magazine they are looking for easily and also this way the magazines are promoted and increases the sample of buyers. Furthermore, the skyline is visible with the majority of the magazines. The skyline gives an insight to the genre of the music magazine. For example, Mixmag's skyline is "the world's biggest dance music & club culture magazine" Which is in fact one of my choices for my key studies. From this, we can see that Mixmag is a magazine that is involved in club culture and dance, letting us know the genre of the magazine.

Publishers are the institutions that produce the magazine. The publishers will control the editorial content and design of the magazine, as well as managing relationships with advertisers. Circulation figures help publishers to plan how many issues to produce and distribute. Furthermore, which publisher uses a network of distributors, who manage the flow of magazines from the printer to the final newsstand, where the magazine is sold. Regular readers of magazines, may wish to subscribe to a number of issues, and have the magazine regularly posted to them, usually at a discounted price. Magazines can also be distributed by ezines which are electronic versions of magazines, which pages can be turned over etc. Additionally, as everyone in the modern world is centred around their phones, many magazines now have smartphone or iPad apps with some content available.