Indie Genre

What does genre mean?

A genre is a specific type of music, film, or writing. Your favourite literary genre might be science fiction, and your favourite film genre might be horror flicks about cheerleaders. In music, genre refers to musical style such as jazz, salsa or rock. In film or literature, the genre is determined by the subject, setting or plot of the story. When you are wandering around a book store, books are usually arranged by genre. Many genres, such as "mystery" or "fantasy," overlap in film and literature, while others, such as "romantic comedy" in film or "historical fiction" in books, are specific to one or the other.

What is 'Indie' music as a genre?
Independent music (often shortened to indie music or indie) is music produced independently from major commercial record labels or their subsidiaries, a process that may include an autonomous, do-it-yourself approach to recording and publishing. The term indie is sometimes also used to describe a genre (such as indie rock, indie metal or indie pop); as a genre term, "indie" may include music that is not independently produced, and most independent music artists do not fall into a single, defined musical style or genre and usually create music that can be categorized into other genres. Independent labels have a long history of promoting developments in popular music, stretching back to the post-war period in the United States, with labels such as Sun Records, King Records, Stax, etc.

As this is such a wide category to explain, I looked online for a definition and found this YouTube video. This video explains a lot about 'What is Indie?' and a little bit about how the music industry and Indie genre has changed over the years.

How has the genre changed throughout the years?

Indie Rock

Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include indie pop, jangle pop, C86, and lo-fi, among others. Originally used to describe record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. As grunge and punk revival bands in the US, and then Britpop bands in the UK, broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, a number of indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.

A number of prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s. During the 1990s, Grunge bands broke into the mainstream, and the term "alternative" lost its original counter-cultural meaning. The term "indie rock" became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status. By the end of the 1990s indie rock developed a number of sub-genres and related styles. Following indie pop these included lo-fi, noise pop, emo, sad core, post-rock, space rock and math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success.

In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped-down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock emerged into the mainstream. The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives and The Vines. Emo also broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s. By the end of the 2000s the proliferation of indie bands was being referred to as "indie landfill".

Indie Pop

In the United Kingdom the C86 cassette, a 1986 NME compilation featuring Primal Scream, The Pastels, The Wedding Present and other bands, was a document of the UK indie scene at the start of 1986. It gave its name to the indie pop scene that followed, which was a major influence on the development of the British indie scene as a whole. Major precursors of indie pop included Postcard bands Josef K and Orange Juice, and significant labels included Creation, Subway and Glass. The Jesus and Mary Chain's sound combined the Velvet Underground's "melancholy noise" with Beach Boys pop melodies and Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production, while New Order emerged from the demise of post-punk band Joy Division and experimented with techno and house music.

The Jesus and Mary Chain, along with Dinosaur Jr, indie pop and the dream pop of Cocteau Twins, were the formative influences for the shoegazing movement of the late 1980s. Named for the band members' tendency to stare at their feet and guitar effects pedals onstage rather than interact with the audience, acts like My Bloody Valentine, and later Slowdive and Ride created a loud "wash of sound" that obscured vocals and melodies with long, droning riffs, distortion, and feedback. The other major movement at the end of the 1980s was the drug-fuelled Madchester scene. Based around The Haçienda, a nightclub in Manchester owned by New Order and Factory Records, Madchester bands such as Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses mixed acid house dance rhythms, Northern soul and funk with melodic guitar pop.


Why have I chosen this genre?
I have chosen to create my magazine based on the Indie genre because it is the music I enjoy listening to the most. A lot of the artists I will mention in my research and planning will be artists that I listen to and are most fond of. I feel that the results will be better as I will be learning more about what I enjoy and creating my final product will be based on this. Although, it is a challenging genre as it could have 10 completely different but still be an Indie music magazine. This is shown in the mood board below; they are completely different but still based on the genre, therefore I need to choose carefully what type of layout I want it to be. The more conventions that are on the product, the better, although if I do it wrong it could look like a 'rock' magazine. I will enjoy choosing from such a variety in style as I wouldn't be able to do this in other genres.

These are examples of previous magazines that include Indie artists or events.

Reader Profiles

What is a reader profile?

The term “reader profile” is used in several different senses in the computing community. It can refer to a profile of an individual that includes self-reported information designed to give people a picture of who that person is, a demographic analysis of site users developed by a company for advertisers who want to know if they will be a good fit for that company, or a profile developed by a content creator with the goal of determining who content is being produced for so that it can be tailored for the audience. In all cases, a reader profile provides information about people engaging with online content, and this information can be used to make that content more relevant to the interests of readers.

In terms of individual profiles, many websites allow their users to create reader profiles. While the profiles are ostensibly designed for the purpose of networking with other users who want to find people with similar interests, they are also used by the site itself. Sites keep track of information disclosed in their reader profiles to learn more about the demographics of their users. This information is used to create unique and appealing content. Some sites have algorithms that serve up specific pages to particular readers and offer other customized features.

Publications that want to attract advertisers must also develop reader profiles. The profile provides an overview of demographic information about their readers including age, interests, background, place of residence, and history of interaction with ads. Some of this information is collected through surveys and studies, while other data can be collected from user profiles. Advertisers can look the profile over to see if the readers of a site are a demographic they are interested in engaging with.

Sites that are in development can use a reader profile to shape the way the site will be designed and laid out, and what it will contain. The developers create profiles of fictional readers that they are trying to attract, identifying the demographic the site is aimed at. They use this information to create a site designed to appeal to that demographic. For example, a site that wants to create a network for young, disabled Internet users would build accessibility features into the site to appeal to potential users and think about features that would attract youth.

Individual devices and software programs can also have a reader profile feature. In this case, the reader profile stores information about the user that can be used to autocomplete fields, provide people with content recommendations, and offer other features to make the user feel like the device is tailored to her or his use.

Reader profiles are also used off the Internet. Print publications use profiles in the same way to develop content and attract advertisers. Likewise, similar demographic studies are used to collect data about television viewers, music consumers, and many other populations.

Why do magazines do so much research? How does it help to make the magazine?

Magazines need to do a lot research so that their magazine is exact in every detail. They cannot give out false information and need to know how to structure their magazine. They need to know what the audience is looking for when reading their magazine; therefore they need to look at previous magazines, social media, a lot about what the magazine is based on, etc. The better the magazine the more readers there will be and the more money they will make.

Having a reader profile helps them understand what the public is interested in and what they want to read about. It also tells them exactly what the audience is which helps them improve the magazine to how the audience would want their magazine to be, this then widens their audience and brings in more money. More money can also help the company get better equipment and people involved.

I have made a reader profile based on the genre I am going to make. I found many images that I find - from research - will appeal to my genre; such as items of fashion and technology. I edited them using the quick selection tool on Photoshop and rearranged them all in different layers. I have also made key statistics based on the kind of audience it will have. I looked at the reader profiles from NME *above* for inspiration.

Conventions Analysis: Main Covers, Contents Pages and Double Page Spreads TBC

Q Magazine

NME Magazine

Spin Magazine

Main Brief

To design a front cover, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original, a minimum of four images must be used.