Rolling Stone is a monthly subscription American magazine that focuses its content on reporting a range of topics from music updates, everything pop culture and even to politics. The popular music magazine was first founded in 1967 in San Francisco by Jann Wenner and Ralph J. Gleason, who was a music critic. Rolling Stone started its coverage of rock music, and in the 90’s, began broadening their focus to more popular music and entertainment to appeal to a more diverse demographic. This July 2021 front cover features the well-known American singer and songwriter, Billie Eilish. Billie Eilish’s career kickstarted in 2015 when she released her debut single "Ocean Eyes" at just age 14. In 2019, Eilish released her debut album "When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?", which was one of the best-selling albums of that year and she became the youngest artist in Grammy history to win all four general field categories - Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year - in the same year. Since she debuted in 2015, she has massively grown in popularity over the years and is now considered a big name within the music industry.
The front cover of the July 2021 issue of Rolling Stone magazine features Billie Eilish, who dominates the cover as she partly covers the logo for the magazine, showing her to be the main feature that should be focused on. Additionally, the background of the front cover is simple, just one colour, even blurred, to emphasise the focus on Eilish, highlighting the genre of the Rolling Stone magazine, mainly music artist. Although Eilish cuts a lot of the Rolling Stone logo off, it remains obvious what magazine it is due to the bold and bright colours and font used in their logo. The use of the bright red pops out, making it an easily recognisable brand to its audience. At the top of the cover, there is a subheading that reads “The Hot List 2021”, which reveals a potential ideology from Rolling Stone, focusing more on current and popular music and artists to gain attention from a younger audience who are interested in young and popular artists, such as Billie Eilish. It's clear that Rolling Stone is trying to reach a certain audience with this issue of its magazine, not only a younger demographic, but also fans of the artists they feature on their magazine covers. Making Eilish the most prominent thing on the cover, with her looking directing into the camera – the audiences' eyes – is almost her connecting with the reader and her audience. The copy at the bottom of the cover, which reads “Billie Eilish and the PURSUIT of HAPPINESS”, reveals that the magazine is going to contain discussion of the featured artist’s life. This is because Rolling Stone have chosen to write ‘pursuit’ and ‘happiness’ in all caps, showing how the magazine is going to be talking about her life as it's emphasising these words. This will appeal to the fans of the artist who are intrigued and what to know more about her life, which as a celebrity, we don't get to see.
The website for Rolling Stone is very conventional for online versions of magazines as the website starts off on a home page, with the logo at the top of the page. There is many subtitles including ‘Music’, ‘Politics’, ‘TV & Movie' etc, again revealing the genre and topics of the magazine for consumers to choose from. The website also contains an exclusive article, which dominates the homepage, suggesting that it’s the most recent and most important story the website has to offer. Along with this, on the left side of the homepage, there are other recent stories that readers may be interested in which are a mix of music, pop culture and political stories. At the top rightof the website, there is an option for people to ‘log in’ and ‘subscribe’. A subscription to Rolling Stone is needed in order to view and read many of the stories and articles that are published on the website, showing how they are encouraging their audience to pay for their magazine. On the websites main page, there is a ‘Rolling Stone Recommends’ section and a ‘Songs You Need to Know’ section, showing how there is almost a community of people who subscribe to this magazine, and all share the same interests in the topics the magazine covers.
