Magazine InstitutionThe rolling stone is a magazine that focuses on mainly music and sometimes focuses on politics and popular culture as well. The magazine was made by Jann Wenner,he tarted this magazine when he borrowed $7,500 from his family to get the magazine of the ground. Jann Wenner backed careers of many writers so was able to get many articles. The magazines first issue was published in November 1967 they publish a new magazine every two weeks and are looked at as one of the most successful magazines in the music industry. In the 1970s the magazine was mainly publishing things relating to politics, in the 1980’s it then shifted its focustowards being a general entertainment magazine mainly focusing on punk rock music this was because the magazine circulation dipped briefly in the 1980’s and covering punk rock music seemed to bring it back up. Rolling stones unique selling points were there ‘greatest’ lists that they would publish every so often, these were very controversial things that they were often criticized for but also made the magazine more popular. By 2006 rolling stones magazine circulation was at its all time highest with 1.5 million copies sold every forth night.

Publishing company - The rolling stone is published by Wenner Media LLC which is a private company who also publish Us weekly and mens journal magazines. The co-founder of Wenner Media LLC is also the founder of rolling stone magazine, Jann wenner. The publishers highest selling magazines are the rolling stone and Us weekly. The rolling stone in the 53rd highest selling magazine in the United states with 1,469,267 as of the second half of 2013. Us weekly is the 36th highest selling magazine with 1,964,057 magazines in circulation as of the second half of 2013.

How they make their money – The majority of rolling stones moneys comes from magazine sales like most the other magazine. The magazine also makes a large amount of money by people who want to put advertisments on thier magazine this can cost up to $200,000 for a full page on the magazine, i found this information out on their website at http://www.srds.com/mediakits/rollingstone/index.html. Their rolling stone website also makes them a large amount of money as they get over 6 million views a month, this can give them a monthly earning of $86,000 just for their website, they may make more money than that but they dont release how much money they make through their website, i have obtained this information through http://rollingstone.com.websitetrafficspy.com.

How they retain their readership – Rolling stone magazine make sure they are able to retain their readership in many ways, the main one being their main articles. There main articles have the main image of the subject of the article (music artist) as the cover page this is always something that people look forward to read, occasionally they have front page images that can have a huge impact in their readership, for example on one of the magazine covers their was an image of the Boston bomber on it this made the magazine readership to double. Something that rolling stone magazine get a lot of readership for re their ‘greatest’ list these are things that people look forward to for weeks or example ‘100 greatest guitarists’.