Analysis of 'Q' magazine

‘Q’ magazine was first published in October 1986, and stood out from other music magazines due to its higher standards of photography and printing. In its early days it was subtitled, “The modern guide to music and more”, whereas it is now subtitled “Discover great music”.

‘Q’’s typical content consists one or two main feature interviews with artists or bands, and then smaller interviews with a few more – perhaps less well known or someone who hasn’t recently recorded – artists. There is also a weekly feature in the magazine called “Q50”, which states the Top 50 songs of the month which are recommended to listen to. In addition to this, there are reviews of new singles and albums, and news of upcoming artists that are thought to achieve success. Another very noticeable aspect of the magazine is the amount of advertisements for gigs that are going on. This is a significant feature because the readers of ‘Q’ are obviously all very interested in music and are likely to regularly attend gigs, so an update of upcoming tours is essential.

As you would expect, the majority of ‘Q’ readers are male and the age range spans from late teens to middle aged men. I can back this up with information from the National Readership Survey (NRS), which shows that 366,000 of ‘Q’ readers are male, whereas only 160,000 of them are female. To back up my point about the age group that ‘Q’ most appeals to, the NRS proves that 459,000 of ‘Q’ readers are between the ages of 15-44, and only 67,000 of them are over the age of 45. For the most part, readers of ‘Q’ will be fans of indie or alternative genres of music, because this is the genre that the magazine mostly writes about. Despite this, there are occasional feature articles on artists such as Rihanna or Lady Gaga. These issues clearly appeal to a wider readership with a slightly different taste in music than the typical audience have, because the likes of Rihanna and Lady Gaga come under the pop genre of music.

'Q''s housestyle has a consistent colour scheme of black, white and red throughout the entire magazine, with the main 'Q' logo being a white 'Q' on a red square background. This logo is also repeated on every page corner next to the page number. In addition to this, the letter 'Q' entitles a lot of the pages. For example, there are sections of the magazine named "Q Mail" and "Q Review" and "Q Now", and so there is a constant repetition of the brand name.

‘Q’ is published by the institution Tower Publishing and distributed by the company Frontline. It can commonly be found in any big chain supermarkets (for example, Tesco, Asda or Morrisons) and also in book or music stores such as WHSmith or HMV.

The typical social group that would read ‘Q’ magazine are represented to be quite narrow minded when it comes to music and don’t conform to the more popular genres of music such as pop music. They seem to be very opinionated about the type of music they like and only listen to indie styles of music which are not traditionally as popular. I would imagine that when there are feature articles on mainstream artists such as Lady Gaga, the magazine would lose some of its regular readers that are huge indie fans, and in turn pick up some alternative readers who are fans of pop music and wouldn’t usually read magazines surrounding the rock, punk or indie genre.

Something interesting I have noticed from analysing ‘Q’ magazine is that there are some sections of it that are actually based on more mainstream, worldwide artists such as The Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga. From looking at the front cover of the magazine, I personally don’t think that this is something you would expect because the magazine seems as if it would be completely indie, punk or rock music based.