Target Audience Research - Existing Music Magazines

From conducting my questionnaire, I found that Q and Rolling Stone magazines were the most popular (taking into account that the genre and style of these magazines is similar, therefore their individual results can be combined). I decided to research into them to find out more about what my target audience would like to see from my magazine.



Target Audience Research from alice_faz

Target Audience Research

I decided to interview some people from my target audience to find out even more about what they like to see from music magazines. This will give me a bit more of an idea as to what I can include in my work so that it fully appeals to my demographic.

Questionnaire

I devised a questionnaire to get a general idea about what people want from a music magazine. I decided to ask mostly young adults between the ages 16 and 21 because I would like my magazine to appeal to partly this age group, however I asked one person in the 34+ category because I want my audience to be 16-35. This way, my magazine will appeal to a wider audience. From my results, I have found that the most popular music genre with my audience is pop, although a popular music magazine is NME. However, Q and Rolling Stone were also popular and have a similar genre and style to each other, and with their results together, these magazines were more popular than NME. I will take this into account when creating my magazine: it will have the look and feel of Q or Rolling Stone and be in the genre of pop. This will give my magazine a more glossy, up-market feel that will appeal to my audience, as the target demographic for Q magazine is mainly people in their 30s, and Rolling Stone is 18-30. I decided to ask both males and females as I want my magazine to appeal to both genders, however I would like to target it more towards females. Q is mainly aimed at males, but I will include features that are attractive to both genders, giving it a wider appeal. I asked what band/solo artist would most likely attract my audience to the cover of a magazine because, I can maybe base my cover photo on the style of the most popular bands or solo artists chosen by my demographic. I will take into consideration the results of this when carrying out my photo shoot.

Double Page Spreads

I analysed some existing double page spreads to see how they are laid out, and to give me some ideas about what features I could use in my magazine. There were some features I liked and some that I didn't, however this gave me a deeper insight into what I want my double page to possibly be like; I have now seen how existing articles appeal to their specific audiences. I have noticed that all the articles for older audiences seem to use quite simplistic features with an added pop of colour, and the articles for younger audiences are brighter and seem busier. I will take this into account when creating my own double page.

Difference in Magazine Covers

I decided to look at as many magazine covers as possible from different magazines to see the differences and similarities between them. This gave me a chance to see what I like about certain covers, and allowed me to see what features I could possibly include to make my cover to the highest standard.

Contents Pages

I decided to analyse some existing contents pages to see the contrast between them in different magazines.

 

Front Covers

I researched and analysed some existing magazine covers to see what real magazines look like, and too see what is appealing for the audience. It also gave me some ideas and allowed me to discover what I liked and didn't like about certain magazines.