The distribution process of magazines

Product distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix. An organisation or set of organisations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.

The other three parts of the marketing mix are pricing, the cost and promotion.

The final stage in the making of magazines is making the product available to the public, usually putting it on sale. In previous centuries, an author was frequently also his own editor, printer, and bookseller, but these functions are usually separated now. Once a book, newspaper, or other publication is printed, the publisher may use a variety of channels to distribute it. Books are most commonly sold through booksellers and other retailers. Newspapers and magazines are typically sold directly by the publisher to subscribers, and then distributed either through the postal system or by newspaper carriers.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_(business)

The production process of the music industry

Pre-production

Pre-production is a process where a recording artist spends time creating and refining their music ideas and producing a practise recording or rough draft of a song in order to establish ahead of time if the ideas are promising. This saves time and money wasted in expensive studios. The goal is to enter into the major recording phase of production with the basic and most promising ideas already established.

Production

This is the actual making of the music:

• First, an idea is thought of, and imagine what it will sound like once you have completed it and which instruments you'll use to create the sound you want.
• Recording, tracking and arranging Dance music producers will build the track up from samples, loops and MIDI. Music producers who work with bands and musicians will record the different parts of the track to disk.
• Editing- You will in this stage drag, drop, cut, trim, copy, paste and nudge the various programmed or recorded parts to fit together well and produce the completed raw song.
• Mixing- Mixing or mixing down is the final stage in which you use volume, EQ, panning and effects to create the stereo image and final sound you want.
• Mastering- A good mastering engineer will take your final mix and finalize it into a master ready for public use.

Post-production

Post-production is part of film-making and the video production process. It occurs in the making of television programs, advertising, audio recordings and photography.

It occurs after the actual end of shooting and/or recording the completed work.

Post-production is in many different processes. These typically include:

• Video editing of the picture of a television program using an edit decision list.
• Writing, (re) recording, and editing the soundtrack.
• Adding visual special effects - mainly computer generated imagery (CGI) and digital copy from which release prints will be made (although this may be made obsolete by digital-cinema technologies).
• Sound design and sound effects, known as sound re-recording or mixing with professional audio equipment.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-production - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-production - http://www.renegadeproducer.com/music-production-process.html.

How is the music industry regulated?

The music business is largely a self-regulated industry - everyone seems to be involved in some control, from individual artists to unions and corporate giants, from publishers to licensers, from collecting agencies such as ASCAP, BMI and others to copyright and trademark offices.

Firstly, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office must have an example of a band's name and / or logo registered before a band can claim rights in that name. The Office regulates who can have what name and symbol, and under what circumstances likenesses to similar preexisting band or entertainment names might be allowed. Any group who performs, records, or sells their music for commercial gain, would be wise to register their name in order to defend their rights to continue making a profit from that music.

An individual artist will have enough money or popularity to be able to make their own career and decisions, usually because they have their own publishing company, merchandising, and their own record company. However, most artists cannot afford, or do not have the contacts, to run their own publishing company, and as a result about 50% of their profits are paid out for the right to publish the music itself. When certain publishers own the artists rights to a song, they can prevent further performances of those songs on future albums, should the artist ever change publishing companies; or, they can prevent other bands from recording a cover of those songs.

If a group wishes to cover a previous song for commercial gain they must secure a copyright license from the Harry Fox Agency for any or all of the following reasons:

· Licensing of copyrighted musical compositions for use on commercial records, tapes, CDs and computer chips to be distributed to the public for private use.

· Worldwide licensing of copyrighted musical compositions for use in audio/visual works including motion pictures, broadcast and cable television programs, CD videos and home videos.

· Licensing for use in TV and radio commercial advertising.

· Licensing of musical compositions in recordings for other than private use, such as background music, in-flight music, computer chips, syndicated radio services, karaoke and multi-media.

· Licensing of musical compositions in recordings made outside of the U.S. and imported into this country for sale.

Reference: http://www.essortment.com/music-industry-business-regulations-control-63957.html

IPC Case Study

IPC Media

Convergent media -

Convergent media is when more than one media area come together, often in a business relationship but also technologies and genres.

Magazine companies are a good example of this because they do lots of different types of media such as; newspapers & websites. Which all come together to become one whole convergence as they are all different types of media.

Publishing companies -

A Publishing company basically does the printed work of a book or newspaper and all the making of it, it goes through a process copy-editing, graphic design, production and marketing and distribution of newspapers, magazines and books, they also work with the electronic media.

Background information of IPC -

•IPC media publishes a huge range of magazines and websites from many different sectors, they range from; NME, TV times, Marie Claire, golf monthly e.t.c.

•They produce over 85 iconic media brands and online brands sometimes reach 20 million users each month.

•Their most ‘up-market’ women’s division brands are mostly luxury fashion magazines such as ‘Marie Claire’ and ‘InStyle’, more lifestyle type brands would be including ‘woman&home’ and ‘Essentials’.

• Each magazine would rate each person with a class and find out what type of people would most likely read their magazine.

•IPC was originally owned by a management called ‘Cinven’, and used to be a venture capital group, after it was re-bought the company was re-named to IPC media. Sometime later, the company was bought out by a company called ‘Time inc’, which is the magazine publishing subsidiary of ‘Time Warner’. Which is the second largest entertainment company in the world, also the world’s largest media company.

•IPC media have approximately 85 media brands.

•With a wide range of media brands, IPC sell around 350 million copies a year.

•They need to make magazines which are suitable for everyone, they have three

target audiences; Men, mass market women, and up market women.

Readership -

They need to make magazines which are suitable for everyone, they have three target audiences; Men, mass market women, and up market women.

•The men’s portfolio consists of a variety of leisure brands including ‘country life’, ‘Horse and hound’, ‘rugby world’ and ‘Decanter’, also including lifestyle type brands such as ‘Nuts’, ‘Mousebreaker’, and ‘NME’.

•Their mass market women has famous women’s weekly magazines such as ‘Look’, ‘Now’, ‘Chat’ and ‘Woman’. Also, TV type brands including; ‘What’s on TV’, ‘TV times’, ‘TV and satellite week’.

•Up market women’s division contains much more luxury and fashion magazines such as; ‘Marie Claire’ and ‘Instyle’. The more lifestyle types would be ones like ‘Woman&home’ and ‘Essentials’. They even have more home like type magazines called ‘Ideal home’, ‘Livingetc’ and ‘Housetohome’.

•Mass market women are women that prefer magazines that are everyday type magazines and lifestyle, and IPC produce many of these types of magazines which make IPC popular with mass market women, it makes this type of person ideal to IPC. These type of women like to have some ‘me’ time and read the magazines, and they like to indulge in these magazines. They mostly get pleasure and excitement from magazines, these women are the types that are quite middle class.

•Up market women are quite rich and can afford to buy the expensive magazines, such as ‘Vogue’ and ‘OK’ magazines. They like to make their own choices and think about themselves, and how they look and dress. They prefer to be their own person. Up market women tend to rely on magazines and get advice from them, on how to dress and what to be like. Magazines are a treat to them, but they tend to read the magazines to manage daily tasks, not just for relaxing, but for help and advice. Up market women shop online more than mass market women would.

•Young men nowadays are mostly into technology and cars, most expected things you’d think a typical man would like. Technology is a major part of their lives. They like to keep up to date with all the latest technology and technology in the future. When creating a men’s magazine, the company need to know what will draw men in, they need to know what appeals to men and what to put on the front cover in order to attract them. They also need to know what they’re talking about, as men are likely to have a good knowledge of technology, cars and music etc. They need to meet the men’s standards and come to their level.

The NRS (National Readership Survey) -

•The NRS (National Readership Survey) is a company which estimates the readership of most of Britain’s major newspapers and magazines which show the number of audiences they have appealed to. They carry out a survey which find out how many people have bought the magazines and to see how many is sold daily, the survey would show 250 newspapers and magazines, they link with publishers and advertising agencies. The purpose of NRS is to help companies with reliable readership estimations for major magazines and newspapers. They interview around 36,000 adults on a yearly basis and record all the results on a big table.

•It helps publishing companies, as it tells them how many magazines and newspapers that are being sold and who to, and what magazines are the most popular and how many to publish. Because the company doesn’t want to publish too many magazine copies when not needed and not that many are bought from the shops. If a magazine isn’t so popular then not many more will be made, and they can see which ones are the most appealing to people.

Comparable products already available

NME is a music magazine which is based on one certain genre of music; rock.

It offers many different things, it has interviews with music artists inside and show all the latest music. Also, photos of bands performing are shown.

It is a weekly magazine which is published every wednesday, and is £2.40 per issue. Furthermore, there is TV news and new film releases inside.

This is a double page spread inside of the magazine, which has information about a band; it gives the reader a 'personal identity' of the band and gives them more general knowledge of whatever they want to find out about. Most of the

time, there is an interview as well, to give the reader any news or 'gossip' about the celebs that would be interesting to know about.

Another music magazine is Kerrang, which is also a rock based magazine. It is very similar to NME music magazine because it has music news, new bands and interesting news about famous bands and artists.

Most music magazines are about rock music, there aren't many pop or RnB genre magazines, this could be because rock is a popular genre of music, and it's 'unique' and its own. Pop and RnB are like a mixed genre and the music ranges into different types of music and merges together.

This magazine is based on pop music, this magazine offers a lot of elements; it has TV news, and film releases and interesting stories and interviews about celebrities and fashion, everything is into one and it's not just about music, it's about other things as well. Which makes it a good magazine, as you don't have to purchase several different magazines to cover all of the topics within this magazine, so you should just buy this one. I think that this magazine is mainly aimed at young girls, who would be interested in celebrity men, and how to dress etc, this is also a weekly magazine which is fairly cheap, but the consumers would be prepared to pay slightly more because of all the things inside it.

Brief History Of The Music Industry

The music industry or music business sells compositions and recordings of music. The many individuals and organizations that work within the industry, are the musicians who compose and perform the music; the companies and professionals who create and sell recorded music (e.g. music publishers, producers, studios, engineers, record labels, retail and online music stores, performance rights organisations); those that show live music performances (booking agents, promoters, music venues and road crew); professionals who help musicians with their careers (talent managers, business managers and entertainment lawyers); those who broadcast music (satellite and broadcast radio); journalists; educators; musical instruments manufacturers; as well as many others.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the music industry was dominated by the publishers of sheet music. By the middle of the century records had sheet music, which was the largest player in the music business: in the commercial world people began speaking of "the recording industry" as a synonym of "The music industry".

In the 21st century, consumers spent less money on recorded music than they had in 1990s, in different formats.The total revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads in the world dropped 25% from $38.6 billion in 1999 to $27.5 billion in 2008 according to IFPI.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry

Audience Consumption Habits

Magazines are made for many different reasons, however, we all read magazines for different ways, we all want to fulfil our needs and get something out of the product which we expect to.

• One way is 'escapism' which means that someone would read magazines to escape from their daily life and have a bit of 'me time'.
• Another way is for 'relationships & social interactions' which could help certain people with relationships and the people in their life and the choices they make or helping someone to connect with others and gaining a sense of belonging.
• Thirdly, 'entertainment' as people want to be entertained and enjoy reading the magazine, but still could be getting information out of it as well. When they could be stressed, they might want to read something that will make them laugh or cheer them up, which is known as 'emotional release'.
• Another reason is to get Information, most likely would be an educational magazine, or they want to get information from a certain celebrity and gaining more knowledge about them, or even finding out about society and the world. Lastly, it might satisfy curiosity and general interest of a certain topic.
• Finally, it might give us a 'personal identity', as a certain role model might be in a magazine which we purchase, and we might look up to them and aspire to be like them. Also, it might give the reader more information about someone, a famous person or someone they look up to and they can find out how they dress and what their life is like. Furthermore, it could be to find reinforcement for personal values and how to behave.

Audience expectations

When purchasing a product, we as the customer expect to get something out of it. We expect certain things of the product, and it to fulfill our needs. So, when creating my final magazine I need to choose whether it will be conventional and have elements on it which the audience would expect, or unconventional and something different which the audience may or may not like, as it could be too unconventional and have something on it that they don’t expect and could react badly to it. However, it could be a good thing because it's something different and unique, and unconventional to other magazines.

The brief is to create a music magazine, which I need to decide whether it will be conventional or not. In a typical music magazine we would expect;

• Music related stories/articles
• Pictures of singers
• Daily music news
• Double page spread/interview
• Barcode
• Contents page
• Colourful and eye-catching background
• New song releases
• Masthead (front cover)
• Main image
• Price
• Date/issue

So, to make my final magazine successful, I must try and include all of the above. However, I could make it unconventional and surprise the audience, which could turn out better or worse.

Appropriate audience theories

Evaluation

The successes which I had during my preliminary task was that I knew how to work Photoshop which would speed up the process of creating my magazine as I was confident as to what to do. Also, any techniques I didn't manage to do in my GCSE magazine, I could easily do on this one as I have more knowledge and have experienced photoshop more and have no difficulty using it. So me being experienced with Photoshop has helped a lot and I could just get on with working.

However, there are some things which I forgot how to use from GCSE, so being reassured with how to use all of Photoshop, and having more time on it, I got used to it and feel much more confident with using everything. I have also learnt how to use blogger and upload my work to it, and would be able to use it again in the future.

On the other hand, there are some improvements I could consider, one of them being taking slightly more care when using the lasso tool and cutting around pictures, as the main image of the students isn't perfectly cut out. I could have also, maybe created my own badge to make my magazine more unique and different. Instead, I used another school's badge, which wasn't the perfect colour scheme which I originally wanted if I were to create my magazine again. I used another school's badge because of the time I had, if I had more time, I would have taken more time and attempted to create my own, I did attempt to create my own but it didn't look very professional, so i didn't use it.

I think that I have followed the brief as much as possible, as I have created a magazine which does look like a school magazine and has all the features that you'd expect on a typical school magazine, and I have also created a contents and front cover mock-up to show where I will place all the features on my magazine. Lastly, I have researched other school magazines to see what to put on my magazine and what is conventional. I did this by analysing two front covers and picking out a few features of both and explaining the effect of using them and how it affects the audience. By doing this, I had more knowledge on school magazines in order to make my own.