Target Audience

To make my magazine be more appropriate for the target audience, I created a questionnaire for people around the age group of 16-18, to fill in the answers. The questions relate to what type of music they like, along with questions directed towards personal preference on layouts As you can see to the right, this is what my questionnaire ended up looking like before any answers were sent to me. A variety of people ranging from the age groups, to the different genders and to various personal opinions on what the individuals like. By doing this, I will be able to satisfy and use at least one feature that a range of people prefer. Also to the right, you can see a logo of Survey Monkey. This is the website I used to create the survey.

To start off with, Billboard is one of the most famous music magazines out there today. It doesn't tend to stick to one specific genre, but mainly what is currently in the charts and popular. By having this as what they usually publish, it is mainly Pop music that enters their charts. The target audience for this magazine would be both genders, but more females would be attracted to the magazine due to the type of music they publish. With age range, the gap between the youngestand oldest would be large. There would be young teenagers such as 13 years old, all the way to early 20's as they tend to still be interested in this music.

The next magazine is NME, which is known for its alternative artists yet still appeals to a wide audience. Unlike Billboard, this magazine is more specific rather than general with its chosen genre. NME is the longest published and respected music magazine which publishes weekly in the entire world. Again, opposite to Billboard, this magazine is targetted more towards the male population as they are often more interested in bands rather than solo artists. The age range for this magazine is again more particular with ages between 17-25. 73% of readers are male which makes the 27% female which is shown in the pie chart. Linking to this, this is some research I found about the readers of NME which is presented in a bar chart:

80% of NME readers we asked feel that music is a big part of their life
52% are interested in taking a musical course/qualification
34% of these are working full time
18% are working part time
26% are full time students this supports my evidence of a mainly educated/working target audience.
77% of NME readers have been to at least one pop/rock concert in 2007 this is sure to increase within the ascending years.

Finally, we have Q magazine. Q tend to produce magazines with well known artists who a lot of people are fond off, instead of those who are sometimes only known by the minority. They also tend to produce stories and news that does not appeal to the younger generation. Similar to Billboard, Q magazine tends to attract the female population rather than males, but they do have male readers. I would suggest that the age range for this magazine would be the later teenagers at around 17 years old, to the late 20's.

Some additional research that I found was the gender ratio between the readers of the magazine. 31.7% were females whereas a dramatic contrast of males resulted in 68.3%. On the same image, which is below, is the age range of readers. The biggest age group reading the magazine fit into the 15-24 age category.

All of these various finding like together with how I have chosen to produce my magazine. I wanted to have the audience at my age group as there is a limit of popular Indie magazines. With the 'Indie' theme, there is also a wide interest in that type of music these days which a lot of magazines don't cover. By having these results, it gave me an idea of what teenagers want to see. I took their feedback into consideration by creating my magazine to fit what they would prefer to see. By using the surveys and real magazines, it gave me an idea of who my target audience could be, then I could find which real magazine would have the same audience as me. Again, by doing this, I could use a similar style or layout which would appeal to that audience. However, I didn't want to copy colour schemes or their house style as I wanted my magazine to be unique and something which is individual, not an exact copy. There were a few results from the survey which were quite close to another so I tried to merge the two together. For example, some of the respones wanted to see an article about a celebrity rather than an interview with them. However, to please more people, I ended up writing a little bit about the artist before going into the questions that were asked.

As you can see below, there is an example of someone's answers to my survey. They gave a brief but still informative response to my questions which have helped in the research. By people answering these questions, it gives me a better idea of who I should target my music magazine towards and who would prefer to have a magazine directed to their liking. Overall, I have targeted who my audience is for my music magazine. It is for between 15-20 year olds, no gender specifically chosen, the people who answered my survey tend to be active people yet still enjoy a wide range of music. A wide majority liked minimal text on the front cover, new music information on the contents page, an interview with a celebrity and on average they would pay around £3-£4. The answers from the survey are anonymous which allows people to answer honestly without any issues. It is better this way as you can truly get someone's opinion whereas someone may change their answers if they have to leave their name.

As you can see above, there is a sample of responses from the survey I sent out to people. This was just a random selection of responses, but also the ones that I have used to reflect the overall target population. In the first response, the respondent is female and 16 years old. I didn't want to base my whole magazine from one persons results, so I used the majority of answers to please a wider audience. In the second survey response shown above, these answers where quite similar to what a lot of other people had said. However, the most variety in an answer was what people preferred to see on the contents page. It was quite level with what people had responded to so I ended up using my style model as well as the highest voted option. In the other four surveys that are available to see, the responses were quite similar. There was a mix of males and females, but the results where dominantly female.

Target Audience Profile
As there were multiple people who answered my survey, I decided to create a target audiene profile. This is an idea of the typical person who answered my survey. I decided to use this girl in this small sample as she has some of the characteristics of many other people who answered the survey. There were more girls than boys who replied to the survey so I thought that using a girl in the target audience profile, it would reflect a larger percentage of the target population. Although, even though a girl was used for this profile, she did has similar answers to some of the boys who replied.

As you can see to the left, there is a picture of my average response to the survey. However, she would also be seen as the type of person who would typically read my music magazine that I have created. There is more specific detail below, but here is the basics. Her name is Emily and she is from Manchester. She is also a student at the age of 17, which perfectly fits into my chosen target audience. Her interest of music is mainly Indie, along with Alternative and some Pop music. You can also see her response to the style of magazine that should be created, along with what she thinks the content should be.

These are her results shortened down from the survey.
Age: 17
Interests: Reading, playing musical intruments such as guitar, being with friends.
Preferred music genre: Indie, some Pop, Alternative.

Thoughts on front cover style: Minimal text with a stand out image.

Thoughts on content page style: New music information in the content.

Thoughts on double page spread style: An interview with a celebrity.

How much would you pay?: £3-£4.