Initial Magazine Research

• Target audience buy Kerrang! magazine only when a band, or bands, they like are featured, resulting in them generally ignoring the rest of the magazine and focusing only on the features they want to read. This recent issue of Kerrang! I know was a particular favourite among my audience as the splash featured Josh Franceschi and Oli Sykes from You Me At Six and Bring Me The Horizon respectively, two bands that are well-liked among my target audience. 
• Also included a special subscription to the magazine whereby you would get a t-shirt from Josh Franceschi's clothing range (Down But Not Out) if you subscribed to the magazine. These two features attracted many people from my target audience.
• Bold, bright, block colours which connotes a more youthful feel, and also appeals to a more male-oriented audience.  The sans serif font also connotes the youthful, male feel. Kerrang's tag line of 'live life loud' coupled with the bold font and colours would appeal to its audience who's genre of music is rock. 
• Expect to see: interviews, reviews and posters as the main features. 
• Bands attract the readers and not the writing, so all articles are focussed on a band. Very rarely does an article not predominantly feature a band. 
• The magazine relies on attracting readers by featuring a large number of bands. This is why, on this particular issue of Kerrang!, there are fourteen bands mentioned on the cover, even though there are only half-page articles focussed on many of them. For example, in the 'news' section of this issue there is only a half-page article on The Prodigy, even though they're featured on the cover as a headline.
• Kerrang's publisher Bauer Media Group, a large German publishing company who publish a number of other magazines, including Q, and hold stakes in British music television. Having such a large company for a publisher allows Kerrang! to use cross media convergence via TV, radio and the internet, and are able to publish in other countries. 

Two bands favourited by my audience.
Block colours.
Sans serif.

• Clash magazine is a favourite of the hipster audience. 
• Features more 'indie' bands, such as The Arctic Monkeys and Bon Iver, it also features bands such as The Prodigy, found in this issue of Clash and the above issue of Kerrang!. 
• Unlike Kerrang!, Clash has a heavy focus on hipster photography and designs, such as Lomography. This can be seen clearly on the front cover, with muted colours and the photograph of the splash being the predominant feature. This contrasts to the busy, colourful cover of Kerrang!. In the audience research I have conducted so far, I found that the cover of Clash is preferred by my audience because of the photography and design, but they prefer the bands found in Kerrang!
• Like Kerrang!, it features a string of bands as a running head at the bottom - attracts more readers.
• Unlike Kerrang!, also features fashion, something my audience would be interested in.
• Clash magazine is its own publisher - cannot reach as wide an audience as Kerrang!.
• Clash readers are interested in music, film, photography, fashion, art and literature.
• Both magazines use a writing style that is informal and natural.
• Muted colours connote sophistication while the design connotes eccentricity.  

Muted colour.
Splash is main attraction.
Eccentric.