Every music magazine is different. This is just as well, as if they were the same then no-one would buy them. Some only differ in layout whereas others are complete opposites. I will be writing about complete opposites, and major competators; KERRANG! and NME.
NME stands for New Musical Express, and is not at all mainstream, or at least it wasn't to begin with. They always did about the "outside" band, or the "underdogs".
At the time many magazines did about "pop stars" and Britany Spears, NME were doing about Radiohead, and Pink Floyd. This proved very popular and a completley new genre of music and living was invented; Indie.
The layout of the magazine is very structured and simple. There is always a big, eye-catching photo and headline, there are normally a few other photo's with corosponding captions, and infomation on what's happening that might interest this particular audiance, and what's happening in the magazine, the letters NME stand out; red, bold, outlined. This is very eye-catching on a rack of magazines.
KERRANG! is probally the furthest you can get to NME, it's heavy, loud and got a lot of attitude. Whereas NME would try and be fairly polite to the readers, KERRANG! doesn't seem to give two. Altough it does seem to have come simaralities to NME, it's not mainstream. In fact very much the opposite. KERRANG! was launched 6th June 1981, a time when metal/ rock was very popular, where Slayer were brand new. If KERRANG! was launched now-a-days it would not catch on but I think it's the orgionality of it that keeps it at the top of the charts, in the field of rock magazines.
The word KERRANG! is onomatopoeic and is the sound made when playing a power chord on guitar, and because of the boldness of it, it is very attractive to teenagers who are into that scene.
In conclusion, these two magazines are very differant but in some ways very similar. They both aim towards the same age groups and are both going against the grain of society.
