Initial Notes on Music Magazine Advertisement

This Jessie J advertisement is promoting her new album 'Who You Are'. Unlike other adverts, this one is unique as it uses very dark colours. This could connote a darkness, potentially suggesting her songs have strong feeling and meaning to them. The white and gold text however stands out against the black background, making it easy to read and eye-catching. She uses an image of herself which makes it obvious to the audience who the advert is promoting, also helping drawer in her target markets attention.

This advert uses colour to help catch the attention of the audience. It is predominantly red in colour. The colour has connotations to love, passion and similar to the Cheryl advert below could suggest the music on the album is quite mellow, relaxing and passionate. It is promoting her new album that Rihanna is releasing called 'LOUD'. It also gives a date, allowing audiences to know when they can buy the album.

Cheryl Cole Magazine Advert. Uses an image of herself. The main color on the advert is red, which links her lips and the text together as they are all red. Also the color red has connotations to love and passion, suggesting the new album '3 Words' may be very relaxing, loving and quite passionate. 

Justin Timberlake 20/20 world tour magazine advertisement. This doesn't have particular dates on it, instead it is a way of getting his audience excited in anticipation of him releasing the tour dates and places. The advert is very simple, a black and white image of him, with text next to it. The text stands out as it is in gold, in a large font, making it obvious to the audience. 

Bastille Bad Blood Tour Dates Magazine Advertisement- This shows audiences dates throughout February and where the artist is performing. They have used the artwork from they're album, making it obvious to Bastille's target market what the magazine advertisement is promoting. 

In order to carry out this task successfully and to be able to understand the sort of things artists do in order to advertise themselves effectively in magazines, I had to do lots of research on many different music magazines, both well known ones and niche ones. This market research lead me to multiple main findings.

1) The first is that on the whole, most of the artists music magazine adverts use self endorsement to help attract audiences. By this I mean they use images of themselves to help catch the attention of the audience. By doing this it can help people see what the artist is advertising, in turn hopefully making the consumer buy whatever it is the artist is selling. From looking at some of the magazine advertisements, woman tend to use very airbrushed images which make them look 'perfect'. This can make audiences want to be like them and therefore find them inspirational and can be a way of making audiences buy whatever it is they are promoting. This is often a way of attracting a female audience. Also woman often use explicit images of themselves, often where they aren't wearing very much, as a way of appealing the male fan base. Male artists often use photos of themselves as well, sometimes they may use topless photos as a way of endorsing they're product, however usually use images of them looking smart in suits. However, from the research I carried out, I found this is very much dependent on the genre of music. This is because certain genres may advertise very differently.

2) The genre determines the way the artist is advertised/ promoted. For example I have found that rap artists have a tendency to where baggy clothing, snap backs and chains. These are all iconic things that you would expect from this genre, otherwise known as the stereotypical iconography of the genre. In contrast to this, in a pop song, you could expect to see very different things, such as more casual everyday clothes and trainers. This is because the way we perceive different genres of music is different, and usually this is also apparent with the sort of people who listen to the genre of music too.