Alix Kelly

Music Magazine Market Research

For my music magazine I have conducted some primary research to group of audience to help me decide on my target audience for the magazine. I have used a questionnaire with a set of questions that set out what people read and why they read the magazine. I have got 10 people to fill out the magazine and collected a range of qualitative and quantitative data which I will put into a set of charts to help me choose which would be the best music to set my ideas on.

Gender

Gender

MaleFemale

To start off with the questionnaire I asked my participants if they were male or female. More males answered the questions. As an improvement I would ask 5 males and 5 females as this will help me set my music magazine for both genders. This pie chart helps me to decide that I can still aim my magazine because further on in the questionnaire, both genders read the same magazines and listen to the same kind of music. Looking at the quantitative data, the 60% of males and 40% of females have answered the questionnaire. This gives me a range of ideas of what participates will listen to depending on their gender.

Age

The age of people that answered my questionnaire was all within the same age group of 16-24. This gives me a direct link to what age my target audience will be. It also helps me to choose what decade of music I can limit my music to. For example, people aged 16 – 19 years will be listening to recent and modern music that could be in the charts. However, people a little bit older such as 20-24 may listen music which is slightly older as well as modern music in the charts because they will be more known to music from years such as the 80s-90s.

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Employment

For this question I asked if the target audience if they were in employment or unemployed. This helps give me an idea of the type of audience that I should aim my magazine at. People who are in part time employment are going to have more money to spend on magazine and will want to see a more detailed magazine; the people who are unemployed are all in education so they will also be reading the same music magazine because they are going to have access to magazines in the schools. All the target audience were at the same age group and will be listening to similar music and will want to read similar articles because there is a wide variety of music available. For my music magazine, I will be aiming it at both groups because they will both expect a detailed magazine.

What type of music do you listen to?

In this questions I asked what kind of music people listened to, the options were pop, rock, house, indie and RnB. This wide variety of music was narrowed down to the most popular being pop and RnB. The audience could select more than one answer which helped to give me more of an idea of

Employment

Part TimeUnemployed

Pop Rock House Indie RnB0

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Type of Music

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what kind of music the participants were listening to. To help with my decision of choosing a genre to aim my music magazine on, I will aim more towards pop and RnB as there will be acts in the genre that everyone will be aware of these acts. Other genres such as indie were also popular and will be seen in my music magazine because it can clash with pop and RnB when looking at music charts.

Which of the following music magazines do you read?

To help me decide what to have in my music magazine, I asked the participants what they would enjoy reading the most. Looking at the graph about, we can see that most of the audience enjoy looking at photographs of their favourite artists or the ones that are advertised on the front of the magazine. As well as photos, the second most popular was artist interviews. In my magazine, I would include photographs and artist interviews to attract most of the target audience. The artist would have to be a popular artist such as Rihanna who is in the charts almost every week as this will be easily recognisable to the target audience.

Artist In-terviews

Photographs Advertisment Incentives Competitions0

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What do you enjoy reading the most?

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How often do you read music magazines?

To know how much my audience read music magazines, I asked them how often they would read a magazine. The majority of the audience responded with a few times a month, which means they must read several different magazines. For my magazine, I would make it a more detailed magazine because the audience will not be reading a small magazine over and over again throughout the month, so a more detailed magazine that contains more photographs and more artist interviews will keep the audience satisfied as it will take more time to read it and will be worth the money spent on it.

How else do you search for your music?

Here I have collected some qualitative data to help me decide what to put in my magazine and what to advertise in my magazine. The majority of the people who answered my questionnaire stated that they would go onto music websites such as ITunes to look and listen to music. Therefore, in my

Itunes/Other music websites

Artist Websites Magazine Websites0

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How do you consume music?

How often do you read?

Once a weekOnce a monthFew times a monthNever

Alix Kelly

music magazine, I am going to have advertisement of artist’s new songs or albums in the magazine directing the audience to ITunes. Also, one person looked at the artist website to search for information about their favourite music. I would also out the website of the artist on the page so that more people will look at the website and learn more about the artist.

How much would you spend on a music magazine?

How much would you spend on a music magazine?

0-£1£1.50-£2£2.50-£5

To have an idea of how much my target audience are willing to pay for a music magazine I asked them to choose from the following options 0-£1, £1.50-£2 or £2.50-£5. More than 50% of the participants chose the option to pay from £1.50-£2, from the quantitative data, I can gather that the target audience are focusing on a cheaper music magazine that is still going to have enough information in it. I would still have artists interviews and photographs as that is what most of the audience is paying for.

Which of the following magazines would you read?

NME Kerrang! Nylon Q Rolling Stone0

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Which magazine would you read?

Looking at this qualitative data, I can tell that the majority of the participants read Q music magazine and a few others read NME. Q generally targets their magazine at a primary audience of an older

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generation. But their music reviews are related to music that is in the recent charts of different genres which helps them to reach a wider audience. For my magazine, I will aim to have a selection of the most popular genres of music that are similar to the ones that are in the charts and also have it mainly aimed on pop as that is what most of the audience listen to. Also, Q focuses on looking at music from an older time as well. Recently, people of a younger age have been interested in music from older times; this will help me to use this in my magazine as it will target more of a wider audience.

Would you buy a magazine because of an artist advertised on the front cover?

Yes No01234567

Would you buy a magazine because of the front cover?

To help me decide on what to put on the front of my magazine I asked the participants if they would buy a magazine cover because of an artist on the front of it. Therefore, on my music magazine, I will choose a popular artist that is targeted at quite a mainstream audience who will be interested in the artist and will buy the magazine. Artists such as Lady GaGa or The Kooks who have appeared on the front of Q magazine would be useful because they are easily recognisable to the audience, niche and mainstream. The artist would have to stand out on the front cover and the story would have to be eye catching so that the audience will be attracted to it.

To conclude, I have found out that most people listen to pop music and are willing to pay £1.50-£2 for a magazine. They also are interested in reading music magazines such as Q and NME. Most of the audience would buy a music magazine because of an artist that has been used on the front of it. As the majority of the listen to music on sites such as ITunes, the audience will be familiar to songs that are in the recent charts. This helps me to decide what I should put on the front of my music magazine and who I should aim it at. As they only read music magazines a few times a month I would make the magazine quite detailed and full of artist interviews and photographs because that is what most people are interested in looking at.