‘Q’ music magazine is a popular and indie music magazine distributed monthly in the UK. This magazine is published by Bauer Media which is a division of ‘Bauer Media Group’; a large German publishing company, founded in 1875. It was started by a man called Ludolph Bauer and his son Heinrich, who was a print maker. They created a free newspaper called ‘Rothenburgsorter Zeitung’. Bauer Media Group publishes 323 magazines in 15 different countries. It doesn’t just focus on one type of magazine but instead offers a whole range of different magazines, including women’s magazines such as Heat, Closer and Grazia; men’s magazines such as Zoo and FHM; lifestyle magazines including photography, fishing, equestrian, sports and gardening and a few music magazines including Q, Mojo and Kerrang!

All the music magazines that Bauer publishes are very different. ‘Q’ focuses mainly on popular music, including chart music and well known indie. ‘Kerrang!’ focuses mostly on rock, hard rock and metal, whilst ‘Mojo’ focuses more on classic Rock and older artists such as Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

I therefore think that Bauer Media would be a very suitable publisher for my magazine. It is a different genre to all the other magazines already published under Bauer because it focuses mainly on newer artists, alternative, rock and other sub genres. None of the other Bauer music magazines do this. I feel like Bauer could possibly be a little bit too established though and maybe it would be better to chose an independent publisher to start off with. The good thing about choosing a

very well known and largely distributed publisher is that the magazine will get a larger audience and profit.

Look wise, I think ‘Vice’ would be different to the three other music magazines. The layout is different, with the picture being mainly on one side with most of the cover lines on the other. Q, like my magazine, tends to mainly only have about two or three colours on the front cover, but the whole layout and placement of cover lines is very different seeing as Q has a large number of cover lines on both sides and bottom of the page.