Why do people buy music magazines or not?

People buy music magazines for many reasons:

☞ Gossip on music artists
☞ Posters
☞ Interviews
☞ Music/gig reviews
☞ Upcoming music events
☞ Look at photos of favoured musicians
☞ See what is going on in the music industry

However, with the economic industry getting so expensive, people are turning to social media. They are using the internet, phones and TV to get information – instead of buying magazines. The two biggest replacements for magazines is Facebook and Twitter, with Facebook having one billion users and Twitter with 500 million, and growing! You can ‘like’ and 'follow' pages which allow you to join music communities and preview magazine issues before they reach the shops, and follow accounts which are updated regularly. Magazine editors tend to tweet and post articles, photos, bloopers from the magazine, videos, gigs and create online debates – allowing their followers to get involved. Below are some figures for how many people like and follow music magazine pages:

☞ Rolling Stone – 628,658 likes and 1,954,528 followers.
☞ NME – 212,865 likes and 375,773 followers.
☞ Q – 30,040 likes and 62957 followers.

However, some people do choose to buy the magazine itself because of its possible value in the future. It allows them to find other artists that are like the ones they listen to, and they can find out about competitions and gigs/concerts that are related to the genre of music that the magazine is based on. You can also carry magazines around with you whilst travelling, and not everyone has access to the internet 24/7. It solely depends on the person, because some like to physically turn pages whilst some people prefer the internet, or using a kindle/iPad.
On the other hand, this clearly portrays why people are choosing new media over traditional media. New media is easier, quicker and cheaper to access.