Research Task Two: Independent Music Magazines

Essentially, independent magazines have much more creative freedom and are curated by like-minded journalists and creatives who share a genuine belief on which they rely while creating new copies of the magazines. Differ within Independent magazine and mainstream is that mainstream magazine can increase their profit by providing advertisings in the magazines, whilst independent magazines can rely only on sales of the copy. Even though independent magazines can experience more creative freedom in publishing, they can face budget inconvenience and the finance situation per month might go as low, as it might go high. Depends on the circulation and distribution. To create an image about independent magazines, I will navigate through very successful independent music magazines.

Will begin with the world’s greatest print and online music magazine – The Wire.

The Wire is independent since 1982, and originally was publishing about jazz music and new music, and rarely there were bits about mysterious musicians and nature of music. But now, it covers a wide range of global alternatives, underground and experimental music. The Wire promotes the most marginalised and undervalued musicians on the planet, with different music genres such as rosk, electronic music, hip-hop, new jazz and moreover. The magazine is in the hold by a team of fully-time staff based in London office, it also includes international teams of photographers, writers that can find useless and necessarily information across the globe.

The Wire aims for greatest investigation among diverse genres, both past and present. As there isn’t any strict constitutional rules so magazine doesn’t face strict editorial policy and exclusion. It does not have a certain agenda; the magazine commits for deep investigation and best outcome of it for different genres. The Wire intents to target the audience of listeners under 25 years old, however there is large possibility to interest older year group which will find the magazine as much as interesting as target audience.

At the beginning, the magazine faced several disadvantages, because it was more focused on one music genre it didn’t had its global appealing, but since it started to include more and more music genres, it gained its audience.

The second also very successful music magazine is RnR, its an eclectic magazine and has covered a broad base of music. From the mainstream to rock, folk, blues, country and more. RnR is an independently run magazine,is for musicians and fans, put together by a small and dedicated team.

RnR was launched in 1988, and originally the magazine’s title was Rock'n'Reel, changing its name to R2 in early 2009 and adopting the current title in 2017. RnR emerged during rock and roll’s formative years, publishing early success of artists such as The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones. The magazine was providing secure platform for readers to go in depth with interviews, reviews and always wanted to influence the public’s perceptions of the genre and its stars.

After a few years of existing magazine started to provide more diverse subgenres, such as ‘Punk’, ‘Alternative Press’ and ‘Metal Hammer’. By which the magazine could be more appealing for diverse listeners, and it also provided a platform for underground or undervalued artists. The magazine covers a wide range of music that new reader might discover something new.  RnR features great variety of content, with deep interviews and articles. Featuring underground musicians and tracks.

RnR has a feature such as ‘Inside Job’ which allows to look inside the industry that produces specific genre of music. Magazine includes a lot of information for people who really appreciate music, and content such as interviews with different musicians, reviews, music news and more.

The magazine has its own distinctive thing such as CD in each magazine. Each physical copy comes with a CD which is placed behind the cover page, CD comes with all the songs that will be featured in the magazine, some of the tracks might not be released yet or some of them feature in the reviews section.

Magazine is comprehensive and carefully have put together extensive information for music lovers.