Magazine Adverts

In order to create our own magazine advert for our bands' album, we need to look at other bands' album advertisements in magazines to find out how the albums are advertised, especially those from the indie genre. I am going to analyse some advertisements I have found in the music magazine NME. NME stands for 'New Musical Express' and is a popular, UK published, music magazine. Therefore its adverts reach a large audience and bands will want to advertise their albums and live shows in NME.

This is an advertisement from NME for Louise Aubrie's debut album. Louise Aubrie is described on her website as 'indie post-punk' and therefore fits loosely to our bands' genre of indie /alternative. The advert has an ongoing colour scheme of faint pink, black and white. The faint pink infers a feminine side to the artist, yet the guitar, hat and the way she has her shoulders showing, imply an edgy side to her also. The mixture of edgy and feminine work well together to create the idea of an independent woman, which also works with the idea of indie artists being independent and standing out of the crowd. The advert is making strong statements about the artist's image and also telling the viewer the kind of artist she is by having the guitar and microphone, this tells us she is a singer and plays the guitar. The actual image on the advert is quite grainy, which suggests a 'Do It Yourself' style photograph, and the artist's elbow overlapping with the section of the image for the font also suggests this. The font itself stands out, the capital letters help to bring out the words, and it is obvious right away what the names of the artist and the album are, which means it successfully and clearly advertises the artist and their music.

Under the name of the artist and the album, the line 'Stunning Debut Album Out Now' is helping to sell the album. The word 'Stunning' suggests the music is beautiful and exciting, and the

word 'Debut' suggests that the album is new and fresh. The way the artist is positioned in the centre of the frame infers that she is the main focus, and important, and the angle of the camera means

that the viewer is looking up slightly at her, again inferring that she is important and a powerful independent woman. The artist's eyes look away from the camera and towards her name and the name of her album, which means a viewers eyes also direct this way as they follow her gaze.