Magazine Case Studies

The Fly Magazine

The Fly is a free music magazine that is published monthly in the UK. It is an Indie Rock magazine which is published by the HMV owned MAMA group. It started as a listings leaflet in Camden for a music venue, however in 1999 it went national. The magazine has a review section which features new releases of singles and albums & also live concert reviews. The rest of the magazine is articles and interviews with artists that generally promote new releases or tours. This magazine also features new bands alongside more established known acts in the pages of its new band sections. 

The Fly is A5 sized. It is distributed around record shops, bars and venues in the UK. In 2008, the circulation of the magazine was shown to be 105,212. The Fly has a history of supporting bands before their fame rose, such as Foals, Muse and Coldplay.

The Fly has a website which was relaunched in April 2008, with both a virtual magazine section and online archive of previous issues.
The link below is the information from 2012 about The Fly magazine:

http://static.the-fly.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/The-Fly-Media-pack-2012.pdf

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Smashed Hits Reading by

Top Of The Pops

Key fac

Key facts
Cover Price	£2.99
Frequency	4 Weekly
Circulation	78,352
Readership	331,000
Boys	15%
Girls	87%
Age range	11-15 years
(Sources: ABC Jan-Jun 2012, Youth TGI Spring 12)

Smash hits

When Smash hits was first released back in 1978, there was a new copy every two weeks which the target audience of teenagers bought. The last copy of Smash Hits was released in February 2006.

The lyric sheet was a main feature that was on the magazine when the magazine was first made. This means that when the magazine was released it came with a card that had lyrics to the latest songs. This is one of the reasons why the magazine became more unsuccessful through the years, because the internet was created. The internet has lyric websites which is a main way the teenage audience would now want to find lyrics, the lyric websites have become more popular through the years. This really makes the lyric cards useless, as you could just look up the lyrics when you wanted instead of waiting for a copy in the magazine. 
Smash Hits target audience was not satisfied by the later version of the magazine, instead the more magazines were made that were aimed at the same target audience of Smash Hits. Also, Smash Hits was not the only way of receiving information and entertainment on music stars, as there were other magazines and also technology. So, Smash Hits didn’t make the magazine interesting enough for the target audience to buy, which led the magazine to the downfall.

Smash Hits still has a website, radio station and a tv channel.

This Scribd below displays a very detailed analysis of the magazine 'Smash Hits' . It displays how Smash Hits failed as a magazine and resorted to only online, because it had competition with other magazines which conveys how they weren't bringing in enough money to continue to carry on print magazines. The name Smash Hits also continued for a radio station and a TV channel.
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