Flicks - spread's little details

I have gone back to looking at my design context, looking at existing magazines. Although I want mine to be original, I think it's important to see what existing film magazines are producing already.
I noticed on the Empire's cover there were little strikes/lines along the left hand side of the front page, I tried something similar on my cover

bottom left corner, bit of detail for the back

I thought that I could have these strikes on the spine of the magazine, however it needs to look right when you can only see it on the front cover, 

It looks alright, not sure if it works well with the style of the front. Are the stripes too random?

It seems a bit pointless when it's just a block colour, I may just have it so it's on the spine only