Analysis of music magazine covers

Q magazine is a really well known British music magazine, which promotes not one but many music genres (soft and alternative rock, pop, hip-hop etc), this appealing to a quite wide audience ( I would say 16-35 years old). On the cover we can see a close-up of world famous Brit pop star Adele, standing sideways, her hair being blown back. This is suggestive, as we see the main cover story relates: 'Adele blows us away'. The masthead is also really proficient: it consists of a single letter title on a crimson red background, which makes the magazine more prominent so that it really stands out on news stands.  

Tottaly different from Q, Vibe is an RnB style magazine, and this is shown by the main picture of  male artist, which is mainly associated with hip-hop/RnB. The main colours used are red and gold and the font relates to the urban genre.  The singer, Akon, is also wearing a chain around his neck, which is viewed as an icon of urban music. The target audience is represented by teenagers and young adults because this magazine promotes up to date music such as RnB and Hip hop .

Finally, as a third example I have chosen a rather unusual magazine. Wire magazine seems to be an indie or 'modern music' magazine; it doesn't give away much information on the front cover,and also for the cover stories the editor has chosen to use a really small font, possibly to focus the audience's attention to the cover picture. Their use of this sort of picture could be classified as unconventional - a close-up of a person dripping wet - this doesn't seem to relate to music in any way, and it doesn't really attract a reader, but shocks one at a first glance. Supposedly, its target audience would be non-conformist young adults to middle aged people.