Case Studies

‘Smashed’ Hits Magazine -

The first ever smash hits article was released in 1978 and was produced every 2 weeks, the magazines target audience was based on teenagers. The magazine itself was very successful bad sadly on February 2006 the magazine sold its last issue. The reasons of why the magazine wasn’t able to carry on functioning I shall now explain –

One of the main features of the magazine when it was first created was the lyrics sheet. Every time the magazine was released it came with a card containing the lyrics to the latest song. At the time this was the only way to obtain/learn lyrics because the internet had only just been created and there were no existing lyric websites at the time. However, in more recent years online lyric sites have become more and more popular, which therefore defeat’s the object of having a lyric card as you can just look them up any time you wanted. This is a massive example of how online media is taking over print magazines as it is a lot easier for people to find what they want on the internet rather than bothering to buy the magazine itself. The magazine had a massive advantage at first that throughout the magazine we could learn about the different celebrity’s lives, modern technology has dominated this as now we had thousands of websites and images telling every detail about famous people’s lives.

Smash hits were aimed at a relatively young female artist, and in all honesty; does anyone truly aspire to be a young teenage girl? People when choosing to buy music magazines don’t want to find out about every band/artist going they want to be able to go to the shelf and pick up the exact magazine they want to read about, this may cover R&B music, Hip hop, rock ect. As many more magazines realised this was the case, smash hits then decreased in the number of sales they were receiving. The genre of ‘smash hits’ when first produced in 1978 was aimed on a wider variety to both boys and girls, as the magazine carried on sealing it began aiming more towards females, as we can see boys noticed this drastically and drifted away from buying the magazine ‘smash hits’. One of the magazines biggest downfalls was not basing the magazine towards a particular genre and not facing the correct target audience.

The magazine in general was knocked out of place because of modern technology allowing people to find out everything they would of done from the magazine through the media. The magazine itself was to slow to pick up where the downfall was going wrong within the business and allowed the media to take over the magazine, it was important for them to notice that everything the magazine had going for it was being knocked by the development in technology today. They had such a mainstream audience that it put many consumers off as it made them feel like they were not part of something special and that the magazine didn’t relate to what they wanted.

Hovering on the negatives, this is not the end of smash hits completely as they still do have their website which is still ongoing and are proud of their live radio station they have which I may say is very good. If the magazine was to notice these faults as the magazine progressed I am sure that they would still of been able to fight a battle against technology and changed their target audiences 

Music Today LTD- My magazine FLICK

For a magazine company to be successful in today’s society you need to ensure you have a good balance between online and print. Online magazines include a range of new technology in todays society, websites, online apps and many money, people are able to access a website on the internet on any form of machinery, it opens a wider age range of audience to. People from lower classes would even be able to interact with my magazine as Internet for everyone is free nowadays and everybody has availability to it. Websites are able to include interact with the audience creating it to be more fun and interesting to use, its available to them on all forms of electricity and also can include videos for the viewer to watch, online games and quizzes. It is an overall more interesting and modern way of publishing a magazine. My magazine will be targeted at teenagers who keep up with the latest TV shows and have a lot of interest in celebrities, all teenagers are part of social networking and by including a website for my magazine will be very important to create lots of revenue and draw in a big audience due to the high demand of social networking teenagers use today.

The top of my magazine in a bold dark/hot red I will have the title of my magazine ‘FLICK’ the connotations of red signify that my magazine is a both gender based target audience, I want my audience to feel interested and engaged with the magazine and is why I will include roll over buttons on each of the headings I will have on my magazine, the 5 headings I will have will be

1)   Home page

2)   Top 40

3)   Interviews

4)   Gossip page

5)   Contact us

I want to include these pages, as I believe they are interesting and will appeal to my target audience. The top 40 page will have a the top songs this month with the videos of them to, interacting my audience into listening to the songs that my music magazine is about it will also give them an excuse to use my website and engage with it as teenagers always want to know the top 40. The gossip page and interview page are both ways of making the website more interesting and different to the magazine as we are able to include interactive section. The layout will be simple so people are able to access the website easily on a smaller device like their phones and still be able to enjoy the website as they would on a bigger screen.

There is a huge gap in todays market for a magazine like FLICK, I would like to bring to your attention how no magazine in the market provides a fun, exciting, new, modern magazine for teenagers. Well this is what FLICK will do. My online website being assessable from all devices will appeal to teenagers and even a wider audience more than you think, FLICK knows exactly what teenagers want and we want the chance to bring this to life. Our title of our magazine represents upbeat songs, ‘flick’ it is quick short and snappy meaning everyone will remember the magazines title and would spot it on the shelves over a magazine like ‘karrang’ or ‘smash hits’ which both sound boring and dull. FLICK is needed in today’s music industry. 

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