Question One- In what ways does your music magazine use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music magazines?

I decided to create a music magazine based around the popular genre of 'Indie' music. My target audience was between the ages of 15-19.
I believe that my music magazine follows the general conventions of music magazines. My front cover includes a masthead, coverlines, a main feature photo as well as the barcodes and price. These are all typical conventions of a music magazine front cover.
This is my front cover >
I followed the conventions of having my masthead as the largest font on the page and then altered the sizes of the other fonts to create a good hierarchy of text on my page.
I positioned the 'comp!' cover line in what is traditionally called the 'sweet spot' on a front cover. This is where the readers eye will generally catch after they have looked at the main image. My main cover line which relates to the main image on the front cover starts just underneath the 'sweet spot' which should hopefully lead the reader into reading that cover line next. I also have a menu-strip on my front cover which follows the conventions of music magazine's as many of them have a menu strip running along the bottom or along the top.
My front cover also includes the bar code and price as well as a website for my magazine. Every music magazine I have looked at such as Q and NME all have these features on their front covers, generally on the left and I have followed this convention.
I used a basic palette of 3/4 colours which most music magazines use. These colours were red,white, blue and black. I decided that blue would be most house style colour and I would carry this throughout the magazine to show house style and that the other pages belong to my music magazine.
However I broke conventions when it came to taking my front cover image. I took my front cover image outside in bright lighting whereas most music magazine's take their shots inside in a studio. I chose to take my photo outside as I liked the location where my photo was taken and the lighting was great for the effect I had in my mind for my photograph. I think that taking my photo outside was just as successful as taking one inside in a studio. Another way I broke traditional conventions is that most front cover images have a white background whereas my background is of the bark of a tree. This made it difficult when it comes to writing over the top in colour as some cannot be seen and some didn't suit. Overall, I liked the effect of not having a white background and I personally think it makes my front cover more interesting to the eye.
Most music magazines, conventionally avoid black text on a coloured background and as my background has the bark effect I had to avoid using black on my front cover that didn't have some sort of coloured background to it.
My contents page has taken different conventions and influences from the following :