Billboard Magazine is an international magazine devoted souly to music, charts, current artists and events in the media in association to music. It is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world - well known for its constant update and keen eye on the music charts on whats popular and new and albums of various genres each week. The two most notable charts are the Billboard Top 100, which places songs - regardless of genre- in the ranks of what is popular based on digital sales, radio airplay and streaming internet data from websites such as YouTube; and the Billboard 200, the corresponding chart for album sales.
Billboard Magazine was founded on the 1st November 1894, by William H. Donaldson and James Hennegan. It was originally a trade paper for the bill posting industry - hence the name Billboard. However, the magazine quickly began to carrying news of major amusements and outside events and soon began documenting events from Carnivals, to live shows to vaudeville, minstrals and other live entertainment. The magazine then starts to stream coverage of motion pictures in 1909, and then radio in the 1920s. The Billboard Magazine only began publishing music charts and such once the development of the jukebox industry arose in the 1930s. In 1961 the magazine changed its name completely to The Billboard Music Week, which devoted the entire magazine to the music industry - showing an amazing commitment to the industry itself and identifying that it would be something to change lives in the future, with the development of things to come- the magazine was only just beginning to catch on to what would be a global phenominon music magazines would become.
Billboard have opened a range of media frenzies to the world, from the top 100 artists, albums, songs and collaberations to the Billboard Music Awards. The Billboard Music Awards (BMA's) is an honor given by Billboard to celebrate artists and the preeminent publication covering the music business, it is held anually in December until it unfortunately went dormant in 2007 - it soon returned though in May 2011.
It is very prominant that Billboard Music Magazine has opened a lot of oppertunities for the world of music and allowed a major magazine to go global and cover a large range of catagories and genres so that it is a wide coverage audience. On the cover of each magazine there is an artist that is thriving - either in the media with personal attributes or vocally and musically with a new album release or a No. 1 single. Each coverpage is different, with the variety of angles, colours and backgrounds. The masthead is always used in the same font but the colour changes depending on the style of the cover whether the colours are changed or the positioning of the artist on the front, the masthead is forever developing in colour to allow it to stand out and be known as 'Billboard' no matter who is on the cover and how much of the masthead you can actually see.
For example, I found these slideshares on google about the layout and design that is explored in detail...
These are some of the slideshare examples that I have been researching along with researching the magazine itself, they are both in great detail and very analytical in the deconstruction of the cover. I will find this helpful as well when I am designing and publishing my own music magazine!
Also, on YouTube, there are a lot of weekly changes to the Billboard Charts as 'TheTesteeTop50Charts' update the weekly changes to the Billboard Top 100 charts and publish them as a virtual playlist for the global audience to listen to: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=billboard+&oq=billboard+&gs_l=youtube.3..0l10.2368.2368.0.2553.1.1.0.0.0.0.65.65.1.1.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.hbaKqp1AsCs
"BE GREAT, BE ICONIC"
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