AUDIENCE RESEARCH

By Joni Sommerville

Q1: What is your gender?The results show that my audience is predominantly female, as almost 79% of females answered my questionnaire. Although the results could be biased, as members of my class were targeted to fill in my questionnaire, and there are more boys than girls in the class. Even more so as a person I know more girls than boys. If I were to do this again, I would advertise my questionnaire more so that I could get a response representative of the population. From the magazine research I carried out the majority of their target audiences identified as male therefore this maybe something I consider when thinking about the audience I want to target.

Q2: How old are you?The results show that 100% of my target audience was aged between 12-18. Again as I’m more likely to be in contact with this age range, the results would come as they have. However, other magazines I’ve analysed focused on the age range, between 19-26. For the publication of my own magazine, it would be reasonable to consider this age range, if it has a wider market for my genre of magazine.

Q3: Where would you normally go to purchase a music magazine?

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The most popular place to purchase a music magazine was from the supermarket, as nearly 86% of my target audience would go to purchase their magazines there. Therefore I’ll require supermarkets to sell my magazine. Surprisingly little to no magazines were bought online which I’d have presumed that it’d be very popular due to the growth of technology and digital media- you can now subscribe to online versions of your favourite magazines for example ‘Q’ magazine have their own app. Unfortunately, its rare to see traditional newsstands but it is still a place used to purchase magazines from despite its decline in popularity.

Q4: How often do you purchase music magazines?

It would appear that my questionnaire wasn’t received by my potential target audience as, over half of respondents said that they bought a magazine every half a year. This could be due to the rise in digital media with sites such as YouTube taking over musical entertainment. However, 25% of respondents said they’d bought them every month which means that there is an interest, and some what of a target audience, those are the people I’d want to purchase my magazine every month. There are some anomalies in my results as some don’t even purchase magazines. Even more so the odd person that doesn’t take the questionnaire seriously (as highlighted in red.) We also need to look at the others who would purchase a magazine on impulse or when they feel interested by an article for example. Its important that with my magazine people are going to want to purchase it every month because its eye catching, too impressive not to buy and can compete with e-media to bring more of an audience to print media.However my results are in accurate as not all of the sample answered the question.

Q5: How much time do you spend reading music magazines?

The majority of respondents said that they read music magazines around 10 mins per day, Therefore this would mean that my magazine would mostly include pictures and extremely immersive, punchy content so that they’d want to spend more time reading my magazine. However, if in general people's lives are becoming busier, my articles could cover a lot within short amount of time. So that instead of thinking of other useful ways to spend the 10 minutes, they make sure that no matter how busy their day, they’d always make the time as it is so interesting.However my results are inaccurate as not all of the sample answered the question.

Q6: What is your proffered genre of music?

Pop and rock were the most proffered genres, following with hip/hop, techno and house all equality having the same preference. There are other favourites that the audience have wanted to include such as Punk and all genres. But if I were to produce a magazine based on my research I would produce a pop-rock magazine that would feature artist such as Coldplay, The Rolling Stones and Fallout Boy. However my results are in accurate as not all of the sample answered the question.

Q7: How much are you willing to spend on a music magazine?

As I predicted the majority went with the option of any price between £3-£5. The magazines I’d looked at had a total mean price of £4.75. From the comments we can see that the respondents wanted an even lower price. This says that the pricing of your average magazine is based on an older person with a higher disposable income. Whereas my respondents were students who would have very little disposable income as they’d have part-time jobs or receive occasional spending money from parents. However my results are in accurate as not all of the sample answered the question.

Q8: Out of the choices below select the most appealing option:

This question has allowed me to gauge an audience as to what content they’d like within the music, magazine itself. The most popular option was to have ‘Music, interviews, album & artist reviews, Fashion and gig guide'. This tells me that the respondents aren’t as interested in celebrity gossip, as only 29% of the respondents would want this to be included in a music magazine; in comparison with the 71% that don’t.

Therefore my music magazine needs to be heavy with content on music and lifestyle as it appears that the potential reader wants to be further educated in what’s current in their favourite genre, rather than the “behind-the-scenes” drama.