I took these two pairings of adverts from The Stool Pigeon, a music newspaper that is now, unfortunately, come to close down and stop publication. These adverts are structured in this pairing, columned way due to the record label's desires to publicise two album releases rather than simply just the one. The David Byrne & St. Vincent advert + Cat Power adverts on the right hand side are signed to two record labels under the Beggars Group umbrella, being David Byrne & St. Vincent releasing theirs under 4AD and Cat Power releasing hers through Matador Records. Beggars Group would have used their funds to put money onto a full A4 sized page for this space for 2 recent album releases. Both these releases share the same revival ideal: David Byrne was the front man of Talking Heads in 1980s yet hasn't produced music in many years and similarly Cat Power hadn't properly released music in a while.
The page on the right hand side are two female artists: Zola Jesus and EMA. Both these artists are signed to Souterrain Transmissions, another independent record label. These two female acts also toured together in 2011/2012, therefore have a relationship beyond simply being signed to the same label.
Looking at these dual formation magazine adverts, it is evident that record labels play a large part in the placement of advertisements and importance of tactical placement within a magazine. Additionally, the type of magazine will be important. The Stool Pigeon is a news paper that explores a wide variety of musical acts, yet tends to stray from the popular artists, with more of an artistic edge: with the addition of literature and artistic content also appearing in the newspaper. When the newspaper was published, it was free. This again points towards the exploration of integrity and artistic value rather than the mainstream, popular music magazines that are profitable. With this in mind, we can rely on The Stool Pigeon to be dense with musicians album release adverts of a very niche type for the income to fund (when The Stool Pigeon still existed).
Another alternative advertisement style is a full page advert for a magazine rather than a collage of certain artists works from one record label or label group, such as the Beggars Group. Full page adverts are to draw more attention to, possibly for purposes of higher potential as an artist. Here are a variety of full page adverts I took from other magazines, as well as some from The Stool Pigeon:
All of these magazine adverts display some of the conventions of an album release advert that I am required to conform to as part of my ancillary texts. A minor details of these conventions include the title or logo of the record label that will produce and release the album. As I have already decided upon Subpop Records to be the record label that release my album, therefore Warner will be distributing the album as Warner are the distributors for Subpop. Another convention of little detail is the release date or 'out now' seen on the advert to prompt the readers when they will be able to purchase the album.
A larger detail and conventional point of these adverts is the visual aspect of the advert. These are often (not always) simply just the artwork of the release. However, I do not want to be this basic; a recreation of a complete new advert requires significantly more creative innovation. Visuals need to be aesthetically appealling with some sort of relevance to the themes or purpose embedded throughout the album.
In terms of graphology of these texts, it is obvious that the most prominent feature of the advert simply at a glance is the artists name. The purpose of making the name of the artist the largest relates again to audience preference, if someone is simply flicking through the magazine and the name of an artist they like or were recommended is seen, then they are more likely to take notice of it and stop. Even more so, another convention is to show recommendations by other reviews, seen in the '2:54' advert and 'Polica' advert. Alternatively, tour dates of an up-coming tour could be put onto the advert. This would condense the purpsoe of having two adverts in one magazine (tour and album release) and put them on to one page.
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