Researching Music Magazines

 Billboard is an international magazine founded in 1894 which means it has been running for over 119 years, although this has not always been a music magazine company as it only started magazines in 1936. This magazine ranks the top 100 songs regardless the genre, based on digital sales, radio airplay, and internet streaming data. Billboard also has a very noticable look to it as it has a logo and the artist always stands out from the colourful backgrounds. you can see that billboard has a specific look as the artists here are in the centre and the sub-headings are sat around them and also the company logo is as the top in bold lettering as this also stands out against everything.

The magazine started in 1896 as this was the year the first magazine got produced although then it was about quite a few different things as it was classed as a trade paper and then later became a music magazine.the publisher for this particuallar magazine is called Prometheus Global Media and this magazine produces several other magazines like The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek, Backstage and Film journal international which are different types of media magazines. This magazine offers a printed magazine, an app and also it is working with radio companys to provide the chart hits. There is also a Billboard music Award is an honor given by Billboard, the preeminent publication covering the music business.
As stated above the magazine used to be a trade paper covering topics like circuses, carnivals, amusement parks, fairs, vaudeville, minstrels, whale shows and other live entertainment but this stopped in 1961 as there was another magazine that got produced called Amusement Buisness so they decided to make the magazine devoted to the music industry. The current readership figures are 16,327 and this is weekly.

As you can see here this is what the double page spreads in Billboard magazine looks like compaired to the older one on the right. The differences such as colour and layout has changed over the years as the one on the right was made in the early 1900's and the one to the right was made in 2012. In the 1900's the magazine text was very basic and told you very little of the artist herself as then it wasn't an interview, it was more of the information abour her and what she was doing. Whereas now billboard has an interview with the artist and they get to know about things from the artist instead and also goes into detail about where shes been and what there going to do next. The text in this article is a lot more complex and has inverted speech to make the artist sound more interesting and also helping the artist gain a larger audience.On the 1900's article the page had the basic layout like a heading, subheading, image and text whereas the newer piece has images,inverted speech, the artists name and a caption. The photography of the 2012 article is from a previous performace and the photography of the 1900's article is a poster like image. I think that the 2012 aritcle is more effective as you know as a reader that the text is based of what the artist has said and the 1900's is more to advertise the artist.

I would say that the closest magazine to Billboard will be the Vibe magazine as this magazine is layed out very similar but appears to a smaller audience of the R&B and hip-hop genre. Although Billboard is not seen to have any rivalrys I would say that either vibe magazine or NME as these magazines are quite similar into what they produce and the layout of the magazine. Also NME started its production idea from Billboard magazine as this was only sold in the US NME decided to make one for the uk and this i think will probably be the closest match to the the Billboard magazine. Plus the NME is like a uk verison of billboard.

Billboard Case Study 

 

Bill Werde is the editorial director for billboard magazine although previously he worked for Rolling Stone as a associate editor. Plus he was also a freelance journalist for a number of publications including The New York Time, Washington Post, Village Voice and Wired Magazine. He started in billboard as the news editor and slowly climbed his way up to become the editorial director.


Billboard website