My Featured Articles

Dizzee Rascal Gig Review

Following a very lively warm up from DJ Semtex and performances from such promising support acts as Smurfy Syco and Newham Generals, Dizzee Rascal finally made his appearance on stage at the O2 Academy London.
Interestingly the age range within the excited audience seems to vary from about 14 to 50 and opening the show with hits such as Fix Up Look Sharp and Old Skool, the young grime artist also debuted tracks from his new album Tongue In Cheek.
A very lively performance was enhanced by Dizzee's playful interaction with the audience and the promotional beach balls being batted around above the crowd's heads. With friendly rivalry between each side of the audience (following a game of 'who can scream the loudest', spurred on by Dizzee himself), the energy in the room reached it's peak as the set was finished with Bonkers, which literally sent the crowd bonkers!
Dizzee Rascal is a must see, you'd be foolish no to!!

Ask The Kids two random questions and this is what you get...

What do you think of the new styles of music that seem to be popping up around Britain at the moment?

Josh: Well I'm a big fan of Dizzee Rascal actually, Tinchy Stryder and alot of those relatively new guys, what is it... Grime? Yeah, they're good.
Zainab: It's fun, we need some new sounds around right now, to break the stereotype of new British music, it's not all R&B and Indie Pop.
Nnena: Yeah exactly, I like going to little gigs as well, in the basement of a little pub, you know, that sort of thing. It's really a good place to discover new artists, some of them are really good.

We've talked about new music, I'm sure our readers would like to know if you have any old guilty pleasures, what music did you grow up listening to?

Josh: Well I don't think I ever liked anything too embarrassing... i hope anyway. I love Motown because my parents played it alot when I was a kid. You know, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson.
Nnena: Well sadly I was into alot of boy bands and girl bands when I was younger. Spice Girls, Boyzone, they're my guilty pleasures! Oh and I was always a big fan of Take That, so I'm really glad they're back.
Zainab: Oh yeah definitely, me too! Bring back Robbie eh?

The Kids' debut album Child's Play is OUT NOW!

My Cover Image

I decided that I wanted to use a picture of a band as my cover image. As i knew that I was going to feature alot about 'The Next Generation' of musicians in my magazine I decided to have a young band and wanted them to be in a school type setting to show the youthfulness and mischief of the music. I took the photo on school grounds and asked my subjects to wear their normal clothes in order to get an authentic image of an authentic looking band. The image of my band includes one male and two females sitting against a brick wall looking directly at the camera. I think this has quite a good effect as it draws in the eye.

I used banners in order to include more information about what is featured in my magazine without taking up too much space. I tried to keep my band photo as the central image. I also added a sticker in order to create a bit of texture and colour within my cover.

My Magazine Title

When deciding on my magazine title I looked at a few existing music magazines and found that alot of their titles weren't directly related to music. I would prefer my title to have some association to music because if I were to launch my magazine I would like people to know what it was about just by looking at the cover and seeing what it's called.

Two well known music related titles I found were NME-New Musical Express and KERRANG!

I decided that I didn't want my magazine title to be an acronym like NME but I like the fact that KERRANG! is onomatopoeic. I decided that i wanted my title to be something related to sound, and finally settled on the title NOISE.

I searched through a range of different fonts in photoshop for my magazine title. I was looking for something modern and different but bold, something that would be hard to miss if it was on a magazine stand.

Here are five of the fonts that I liked. I decided to use the first one because it is big and bold and eye catching without being too loud and detracting attention away from the rest of the cover.

'Behind NME Lines'

After reading Eva Wiseman's article about NME Magazine and how it has changed over the years we get the feeling that the magazine has moved into a whole new generation of publishing, leaving behind many of the aspects of it that people who had been buying since it was first created in 1952 had been reading it for. Once named a 'national institution' this article discusses whether the magazine can survive in the competitive world of music magazine publishing.

Wiseman talks about how over the years music publications seem to have become less and less important, now post 'tabloid invasion and Internet saturation', there doesn't seem to be so much of a gap in the market for magazines to be as successful as they once were when they were 'the only place i read about new music'.

As i have previously discussed, this article also highlights the falling sales in printed magazines, and NME's lowest recorded sale; 'The NME recently recorded its lowest ever sale - its readership falling 17.4 per cent year on year to little over 56,000'. This could be due to a number of things such as the global economic state or readers' falling interest in the magazine.

The magazine has received alot of criticism due to it's shameless approach; 'Morrissey claimed that the NME was trying to 'misstate, misreport, misquote, misinterpret, falsify, and incite the bloodthirsty' after remarks attributed to him on immigration were splashed across it's cover.'
It is incidents like this that may have caused readers to leave NME, seeing such an influential figure as Morrissey publicly battle the magazine could lead to a boycott. In addition alot of people do not agree with the new image that the magazine has taken on with featured bands commenting that 'The constant emphasis on trends and fashion is a little galling. It feels as though it's soul has been sold off piece by piece'. 'Ex readers sound wounded' at the extreme changes that the magazine has gone through and Neil Spencer 'says it's impossible to compare the paper he ran to the magazine today'.

The article suggests that readers and former contributors feel that the magazine has declined with age, whereas current writers and editors believe that it is progressing all the time, though falling sale suggest otherwise. With NME branching out into various other media sources the magazine has become less important and therefore lost the authenticity that it was once loved for.

Plummeting Music Magazine Sales

Recently sales in printed magazines have been falling, one of the main reasons for this is that the music industry is branching out into a wider range of media in order to publicise itself more efficiently. This means that it's not just magazines that can provide the public with news and information about music and artists but also music television and radio stations, online magazines, artist's official websites, review and download sights and even social networking sights.

Because of the recent credit crunch, magazines have become one of the non-essential day to day products that have suffered in sales as consumers do not have enough disposable income to use on magazines and have a choice of many other sources to get free information rather than having to spend money that is needed for my 'important' things.

With the rise of the Internet in the media world it has become such a crucial area of advertisement for many companies which has led to them spending more money on online ad campaigns therefore there is falling advertisement revenue for magazines which means a reduction in profits for many.

Semiotic analysis of NME front cover

Along with the typical features that you would expect to find on the front cover of a magazine such as the issue number and date shown at the bottom right, the front cover of NME Magazine displays a large photograph of Dizzee Rascal looking extremely happy with his arms outspread.

In the background there is graffiti on a wall which suggests that he makes urban music and it says his name in very large type so that it is made clear who he is as soon as you look at the page. Underneath is a line that reads "I'm spreading joy around the world, man!", which suggests that his quite rough and intimidating sense of style and image does not portray his aims, rather than promote a sort of illegality within his music he is trying to make the world a better place.

The colour scheme is largely black, white and red which is simple yet eye grabbing, this gives the magazine a very clean cut and professional look and prevents the page from looking cluttered and tacky as it deals with quite a busy image.

The title of the magazine is situated just above the photo but is somewhat overshadowed by the image of Dizzee Rascal, showing that he is a big recording artist. The names of various artists are written along the top and the bottom of the page as a sort of 'teaser' and to show the range of different types of music and articles that are featured.

These sub-titles also suggest what type of audience the magazine is aimed at which is obviously quite a wide one considering the magnitude of different musical styles that are included, from Jay-Z to Kasabian.