Researching the market place...

Today, I researched the market place of Indie/Rock music magazines for the genre of my own music magazine. I researched price range, frequency of publication, readership/target audience, regular content & feature articles of 3 different indie/rock music magazines and this is what I got...

From the research I gathered about the competing magazines which are already publishing on the market, these gave me my initial ideas for publishing my own music magazine.

Price:

The frequency of my magazine will be weekly like NME and Kerrang as I find these magazines are cheaper and therefore attract a younger audience, broadening the readership. I have chosen the average price of my magazine as £2.60, this is cheap however, more expensive than NME and therefore will make more profit. Q magazine is more expensive and this is because it is reassessed once a month and contains more pages and more information.

Target audience:

I have thought long and hard about my target audience for my magazine and after my questionnaire results proving that more males read music magazines than females and my research suggest that male readers have a higher percentage, I will aim to attract the male readership between the ages of 16-30. But to keep female readers I will have draw them in somehow, by using a female artist in the contents page. For example, Kerrang aims itself more at a male audience and appeals to them by using content such as metal iconic male bands on the front cover pulling angry faces or violent expressions. Female readers are targeted by the use of male bands on free pull out posters and feature interviews. Also, I think, the predominate ethnicity of the readership for these magazines is white British. I noticed that all three magazines had males on the front cover, which could reflect the target audience so I think for magazine I will use male models instead of female.

Regular content and features:

The regular content of each magazine includes, Gig guides, free features, new track releases – which will be seen in my magazine as it attract the audience to buy it. I noticed that Kerrang magazine contained more information on the front cover than Q and NME as they took a more casual style and only giving a few bits of information away. However, all the magazines used feature articles such as cover stories (e.g. who had been interviewed that week/month), recent gossip or news about the music culture and awards/festival guides. I think it is important to include music related events in a magazine as it is what readers want – committed readers will buy the magazine anyway however, others will only buy it if there is something on the front cover that they want to read about. <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
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