My magazine proposal

1. My magazine proposal • “Big iSounds” “Making the small sounds big”

2. My genre/sub genre • The main genre that my magazine will be focusing on is indie, and all of the variations of indie music (i.e. electro/indie, math rock, indie/dance etc). • My reasons for choosing this genre, is that personally, i take a particular taste in indie music, as do many of my friends and the people i know. In my opinion, indie music is one of the most popular music genres in the UK at the moment, and had been for a long time. Covering this genre will allow me to appeal to a very broad target audience of indie music fans.

3. Audience • I am going to try and target an majority audience of around 25’s and under, mainly based on the basis that i am going to use indie music that is mainly directed at this age group itself. Indie music is very much apart of todays youth culture, and I want to try and capture this concept in a way that can be expressed through text and print and appeal to the youths of today. For example, the music of ‘Foals’ really expresses the youths appeal of dance and indie music, making math rock. They take two very popular youth concepts, dancing and music, and combine to two into one unique indie sound.

4. The magazines name • My choice of my magazine name is “Big iSounds”. My reasons for choosing this name are based on the abstract nature and culture of indie music. The deliberate and poor grammar with the lower case “i” stand for indie, and combined with the “sounds” basically just stands for “Big indie sounds”. The misspelling shows off the immature, playful and youthful side to indie youth culture.

5. Model Front Cover Idea’s • The NME magazine covers present a rough idea of what i would like my magazine cover to look like. Firstly, I am very intrigued and interested in the way the imagery is done in this particular model. The use of black and white colours really bring the image out on the page, just by using basic contrasting colours (black and white). Hopefully, this is something I can replicate in my own magazine cover. • Most of the text is orbited around the main image, so you can focus on the image and the text separately. Also, there isn’t too much information being crammed onto the page, so the reader can scan read the page. • What i found most striking and eye catching about this particular image, is the simplicity of it. By only using basic colours, the image manages to stand out from everything else on the cover. This is definitely something I want to incorporate into my magazine cover. Ian Curtis - Joy Division

6. Album reviews • News articles • Preview of the following weeks issue of Big iSounds Magazine Content • The content for my magazine will be quite simple and organised, much like my front cover. It will have certain sections for each different article, review, interview etc in an organised order. The order will go something like this: • Contents page • New iSounds of the week • Official Big iSounds chart • Main Article • Callout photos with page numbers • Live reviews Example of a contents page

7. Unique Selling Point • Unlike most mainstream music magazines, Big iSounds focusses purely on music for the minority. My magazine will be looking for the most individual, abstract and intriguing new sounds from around the globe, not just other bands. Big iSounds aims to praise and give the proper recognition deserved by commercially unrecognised bands, as well as already praising fan favourites. As part of our idea’s of bringing new bands into the fans spotlight, we offer a simple way of getting new and upcoming artists the recognition they deserve. Our magazine gives details of our website, www.bigisounds.co.uk, in which new artists can upload a few songs or even an entire EP which will be sent to us. Each week a lucky few will appear in our “new iSounds of the week” column. To give something back to the fans and readers of Big iSounds, we will be offering monthly competitions to win such prizes as signed goods, free CD’s, t-shirts and other synergy, as well as discounts to out Big iSounds merchandise store.

8. Readers profile • The reader is a young student male around the age of 15-25 years old, earning the average income for a student, around in the E sector. He has just started studying English at university, but also has a part time job in a local cafe. As for hobbies, he enjoys playing a range of instruments in his free time, like guitar, bass, drums, piano, synths etc. Like most students, he is very sociable, and spends a lot of his time, when he is not studying for his degree, out socialising with friends. In the summer, he often travels to many different music festivals, like Reading, Glastonbury, Latitude, Bestival, WOMAD, End of the Road, and last year he even went abroad to Serbia with friends to Exit festival. • Music is a massive part of his life. He had been first subjected to the world of music when he was a a small boy. His Dad would often play different records, like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors etc. while looking after his son. His Mother, who is a few years younger than his Dad, would also play different records when around her son, like The Smiths, The Sex Pistols, Joy Division, The Buzzcock’s and many other different records. From a very young age, he already had a very mixed background to his musical knowledge and foundations. As he grew up into his teens, he developed his own taste in indie and post-punk music, listening to bands like The Strokes and the Arctic Monkeys. As he grew older he met different people and joined different social groups, whose influences broadened his musical tastes to very in depth, obscure and underground indie bands. • Now that he is a student, a lot of his time is taken up by studying, coursework and lectures, so he has a considerably less time to catch up in the latest sounds. It’s been a while since he really started discovering new artists for himself, and he has limited internet time access at his university, so he can’t surf bands on certain internet resources like Spotify, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook and other music sites. He feels as if he is really missing out on the latest musical hype. He is looking for a new way to catch up on new music and new media without breaking the bank. He spends enough of his money on alcohol student and resources.

9. Editorial Mission Statement • Simply, Big iSounds wants to give the latest news, info, releases, reviews, interviews, gig guides, band guides, amongst many other things on independent and individual music, to the independent and individual fans. Our main priority, is what the fans and readers want from the magazine, from the most abstract and obscure bands to the fan favourites. • We want to make small sounds big.

10. Thank you