What Audiences want from a Music Magazine- MARKET RESEARCH

  Market Research

Myself and friend Melissa concluded questioning members of our class (who are of similar/close age groups that would eventually become our target audience) about what music genre's they liked and disliked, what artist's they liked and disliked etc. Investing time into market research would assist the production of our music magazines and would be an incredibly beneficial activity; this is because we would receive feedback that would give us a clear idea of what members of our age group want from a magazine – from a certain genre to a variety of artists, from what they would prefer out of the choice of more text or more images and so on.

For our first element of Market Research we decided to identify what types of music genre's appeal to members of our age group (above) - who will eventually become our target audience when creating a magazine front cover. According to the chart, indie/alternative was without doubt noted to be the most favoured music genre, with around 51% of the people questioned favouring this genre. In addition to this, heavy metal was largely disliked by the majority of the target audience, with around 64% opting for this genre to be their most disliked. From the results of this section of my market research I feel creating a unique, experimental front cover would appeal much more to my target audience/readers who are fans of an indie (individual) style. 



For the second part of our market research we viewed asking what members of our target audience’s favourite artists are as a priority. I found it incredibly interesting how majority of people asked about their favourite music genre selected indie/alternative but when asked about their favourite artist chose either a band or solo artist that fell into the “pop” music genre.
 

One direction is very much in the ‘pop’ music category, which is the artist most frequently selected by my target audience as their least favourite artist. Justin Bieber, also in the ‘pop’ music genre, had the second most “least favourites artists”. Considering both of these artists are in the pop music genre I feel discouraged to use this genre for my music magazine as the genre (as a whole) doesn’t seem as popular as I thought it would be – it has become quite apparent that a large number of people my age are more likely to be listening to indie/alternative bands such as Mumford and Sons as opposed to a solo pop artist like Rihanna.

By this chart solo artists are clearly considered the favourite by members of my age group; which is incredibly intriguing as the “indie/alternative” music genre was the most favoured as a genre – this interests me because indie/alternative music is mostly made up of bands, you rarely get solo artists who fall into the indie/alternative category.

This pie chart simply shows whether members of our potential target audience buy magazines or not, with the added bonus of what magazines people buy, and whether they're male or female. I feel finding out whether these individuals are either male or female could link to why they like certain magazines- the colour scheme/palette? The music genre? Etc. I feel this can assist me when designing and planning my house style for my own magazine.

This chart is concerned with colours that would catch certain individuals attention. Made obvious from the chart, red, pastel colours and neon colours were the top three most popular options, leaving blue, white and pink to be less popular.

This chart shows that red was the most popular colour option with a fairly balanced percentage of male and female participants - although red is mainly recognised as a masculine colour I feel this aspect of my market research could justify my choice of using red within my colour scheme/palette of my magazine. Red is also eye-catching and would entice readers to the magazine, attracting them to look at certain cover lines on the front cover and to then go on to read articles etc.

This pie chart shows that my target audience is mostly interested in the newest artists - this means that they would read music magazines frequently seeking new artists being advertised/promoted. This could also mean that my target audience will be interested in music news, such as what certain bands are focusing on and upcoming tour dates for concerts and gigs.



This pie chart shows that more than half of my target audience would prefer the tone of my magazine to be informal as opposed to formal - this means that the target audience want a more relaxed, casual tone as opposed to a serious one. This will allow them to be on much more of a personal level with solo artists/bands, particularly in feature articles. It will give readers a much greater chance of being able to relate to artists personal issues or opinions as it looks as though they want readers involved and want them to be informed.

Images was the most popular option when asked which my target audience preferred out of text and images. This means that they like to link the text to plenty of images within the content of a magazine e.g. pictures of bands. This also suggests my target audience aren't interested in reading massives of text as they may get bored.