Planning and Research: Magazine Research

The next part of research which was required was the magazine research. I looked at genre based magazines, for R&B it was a magazine named Echoes and I looked at when the magazine originated. I looked at how often the magazine is published and whether it is just a physical copy or whether it can also be located online. Another focus I looked at is what type of music the magazine covered mostly. 

For Echoes I found that it originated in they year 1976 and was a weekly newspaper named Black Echoes before changing in the millennium to become a monthly magazine. Their newspaper initially covered funk, soul and reggae before altering its focus later to cover hip-hop, jazz and R&B/pop. You can both purchase a physical copy of the magazine and a digital copy from their websites. The magazine also comes equipped with the slogan The UK's Essential Black Music Monthly. 

When I looked at the publishing aspect of the magazine, where I found that they use NBM Publishing Ltd, which is a small independently run company with a small staff base of just 1-10 employees. 

The second genre based magazine I looked at was the reggae focused one which I found is almost a combination of two. The original magazine which I was going to focus on was named Black Music and ended in the year 1984 where it was then taken by Blues and Soul.  Originally Black Music was the first magazine within the UK which took reggae music seriously, it mainly aimed at the fans of soul music though it regularly featured articles of reggae. As Black Music it was a monthly magazine. When it was eventually taken over by Blues and Should in 1984 it changed to a magazine published 6 times a year which covers the main urban aspects of music within the UK. It includes things such as interviews, charts, reviews, upcoming events etc. 

I also looked at the publishing side of this magazine where I found that they are a self published magazine, who use their own budget to publish their magazine. They focus specifically on music, and this self publishing could explain their publishing only 6 times per year.