Saturday, January 17, 2026

Genre Research: Music

Hey guys! So, for today's post I finally have my next genre choice up for choosing. And if you've been around for some of my earlier posts, you might remember an assignment I did for class called "Magazine Cover Conventions". If not, in this assignment I had to create a cover for an original magazine of my choosing. And what did I choose? Music magazines. If you haven't caught on, don't worry, I'll just say it. My next genre for research: Music!

Now referring back to my older post, which you may have or may not have read, I mentioned that the music genre for magazines was incredibly vast and arguably one of the biggest. What do I mean when I say this? Well, the genre "music" when it comes to magazines is actually an umbrella term. Almost every genre of music actually translates over to a sub genre of music magazines. In other words, there are MULTIPLE types of music magazine that correlate to a genre of music. 


A few of the most popular music genres used for magazines are:

  • Hip-hop
  • Country
  • Pop
  • Rock
  • Rap
  • Grunge
  • Alternative/Indie
  • R&B
  • Metal
  • Jazz
  • Classical

Generally, their content is focused on the certain music genre and everything circled around it. That means artists, albums/songs, stories, charts/rankings, and features. As for their design, I did have a good knowledge about their covers, thanks to my previous post, but everything else was new to me. 

Here is what I found for their most common design:

Cover-

  • Main image (usually featuring a popular artist or band).
  • Main headline of the feature article.
  • Coverlines of other topics featured.
  • Puffs/plugs of other topics featured.
  • Color scheme that matches the music genre and magazine style.
Table of contents-
  • List of article titles with page numbers.
  • Organized in sections with headings.
  • Short descriptions of articles.
  • Images to highlight key stories.
Feature article-
  • Are more oriented around text than photos.
  • Detailed to the story or written in-depth
  • Multi-paragraph and quotes.


Example of a cover:


Example of a table of contents:











Example of feature article:











Researching this genre, I learned a lot more than what I had already known naturally, but I'm still shocked by how much. Even though this is my third time diving into a genre, I still wasn't ready for all that information and learning what fully goes into the process of making these magazines. 

For the next few days, I'm going to take a step back and evaluate all 3 of the genres I have chosen closely. I want to make sure that my final choice won't be one I regret and will be something I enjoy creating. With that being said, that's all I got for today.

Thank you for reading, see ya next time with an update! :)


Sources:

20 Best Music Magazines in 2025 You Should Know

Table of contents for September 2024 in BBC Music Magazine

Music Magazines and Websites



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