Everyone loves music, but what is the difference between music that is mainstream and known by most audiences and music that is mainly considered as an African-American genre. The magazines that I chose to compare were Rolling Stoneand XXL. Rolling Stone is a magazine that focuses on music but contains news from all over the nation. XXL is a magazine that is mostly about rap, hip-hop, and R&B. These two magazines are both found in the lifestyle section for magazines but are they really similar.
Rolling Stone is definitely a more popular magazine with over 670,000 paid and verified subscriptions. Their demographic is 60% male and 40% women, and the largest age range is 25-34 years old at 26% and closely in second is 18-24 with 21%. However, the age of 55 and over consists of 18%. This shows that their main target audience is young adults approaching middle age. Their average household income is at $85,000 which is surprising due to the fact that 12% of their audience is attending college and 60% of all readers are single. The ethnicity breakdown is 76% white and 14% African-American. One thing that was surprising was the fact that 19% of all readers are Hispanic which is 5% more than African-Americans and 17% more than Asian.
Rolling Stone has much more than just their magazine. They also have a large presence on social media with 6.3 million followers on Twitter and 5.2 million fans on Facebook. They also have 155 million page views on their website.
The first advertisement you see is before you even open the magazine. It is a large advertisement for Mercedes on the back cover. Throughout the magazine there are large amounts of alcohol advertisements such as Crown Royal, Titos, Courvoisier, and more. They also have promotions for festivals and events which make sense because their demographic is a large amount of the people who attend festivals, concerts, etc. The other major type of advertising is music related. Similar to the festival demographic they have ads for Spotify and Sonos. Another type of advertisement is clothing brands, but not the most known ones. They have ads for Mark Nason and Geox Respira which are not extremely popular. Their advertisements fit the market that their readers are in, and it makes sense that these companies would buy ads in this magazine.
XXL on the other hand is not as popular nationally, however, it is most famous for their “Freshman List” which is a list of new and on the rise rappers each year. They have had many freshmen go on to do very well in the music industry. They cater to an African-American audience. Proof of this is that in this entire edition of XXL roughly 95% of people pictured in the magazine are African-American or mixed race. This is actually good for them because of the ninety-five people who were surveyed fifty-seven were African-American. The following statistics of the other races are eighteen white, nineteen Hispanic, and one Asian.
The XXL website did not have their media kit available, so I had to go seek another source. The one I found is not affiliated to the magazine, but seems reliable. They say that 78% of their readers are male and 22% are female. This would lead to more male based advertisements. Their readers are very defined due to the fact that 75% of their readers are in between the ages of 21-29 which means that there is a very distinct target audience for the advertisements. The average income for a reader of this magazine is $56,000. This is a very normal statistic, however, there will most likely not be any advertisements for Mercedes in XXL.
The main advertisement in XXL on the back cover was for Khalid’s new album and tour. This is funny because Khalid has never been on the XXL freshman list before. However, XXL does not have many advertisements. Their ads in this magazine were only Mauri ,a shoe brand, and Finish Line. They do have a “feelin’ like” section which contains articles of clothing that they say are “must-haves.” This could be an advertisement or just a fashion/streetwear portion of the magazine. This is a great magazine with a lot of content, but it seems as if they do not have enough popularity to have big brands invest in ads in their magazine.
These two magazines cover a similar genre which is music, however the subgenre is where there are differences. Rolling Stone, which is more popular than XXL, is more of an all around magazine that has an emphasis on music, where XXL is strictly rap and hip-hop culture. Both of these magazines have great stories, articles, pictures, resources. The question to ask is why does one have about five times more advertisements than the other. It could be because the audience for Rolling Stone is
much more impressionable and willing to try new products, or it could be that XXL does not have a wide enough audience. Rolling Stone definitely has more content due to the thickness and size of the magazine so this could be an indicator of why these two are not equal in revenue.
The way the articles are written are similar to an extent. They both have their opinions on certain situations, but Rolling Stone seems to contain more facts and news. In XXL the majority of the articles are updates and information about new and old rappers and artists. XXL does seem to focus on African-Americans in the music industry which still makes sense because the majority of rappers and artists in this genre are African-American. This magazine is not something that any person could pick up and understand. On the opposite hand, Rolling Stone is something where mostly anyone could make sense of the content in the magazine. These are both great magazines with great content, however one is considered lesser because of the small and specific demographic that they have decided to target.
