Ideal Consumer

My magazine is targeted at a young audience; 15 – 24 year olds to be exact. I’m looking to attract girls primarily but I don’t want to exclude males entirely. The content of my magazine will cover the genres of alternative rock and soul music, hoping to intrigue somebody with an interest in artists like Florence + the Machine and Biffy Clyro. Ideally, my readership will have at least a college/sixth form education as the lexical choice in my magazine will have some verbose language and only consist of Standard English. Words will outweigh pictures in my magazine. Additionally prior knowledge will be useful as I will most report on current news concerning the artist featured without always providing a back story. From the feedback I received from my questionnaire, the price of my magazine is not going to be too expensive so my target consumer will not need to have wealthy parents or a 6 figure salary to afford an issue every two weeks.

Analysis of Results

1. These results show 61% of my target readership would like to pay between £1 and £1.50 for my magazine. To comply with this I will place a puff in the top corner of the cover page with the price £1.50.

2. These results show 61% of my readership want an equal mix of both up and coming and established, mainstream artists. To please them im going to make my featured musician someone who is new to the industry but has already gotten 2 number ones.

3. These results show 57% of my readership would like the magazine to contain an equal mix of information on both bands and individual artists. My feature article will be on an individual musician, however to satisfy the majority of the recipients in my contents page I will write that there are articles and pictures on and about bands.   

4. Although the majority say they want a light hearted magazine I'm going to ignore them and make my article serious because I want to attract an audience that doesn’t currently have a music magazine that directly appeals to them – intelligent young females.

5. Although the majority want my magazine to be RnB I'm going to centre the genre around alternative rock/soul music for the same reasons stated above.

6. 75% say they are more interested in artists from Britain so using this information, I'm going to make my cover artist of English heritage. 

7. 75% of my readership find freebies the most appealing so on my magazine im going to offer a free CD of, the front cover artist's acoustic songs.

8. The results show exclusive interviews and pictures are what they want to see the most, so in my contents page I will leave information about articles printed in the magazine on other musicians. I'm going to keep to my original idea of writing an article as I want my magazine to be sophisticated, I will place as many pictures on my double page article as possible without taking attention off the words.

Magazine Proposal and Questionnaire

My chosen genre for my magazine is music, focusing on alternative, soul and rock artists like Florence + the machine and Paramore. I have decided to incorporate musicians from in and outside Britain to attract a wider audience. My main reason for this is America arguably dominates the music industry so leaving them out would depreciate the content of my magazine. It will aim to target an audience of intelligent females aged 16 – 24 as the lexis I’m going to use will be quite sophisticated rather than glamorous. I’ve chosen to do this because the music magazines currently out are designed to attract a female audience and are mostly ‘glitzy’ gossip magazines like Top of the Pops who just feature pictures of idolised pop stars like Justin Beiber to hook consumers.

1.       If this music magazine was released fortnightly, how much would you deem a reasonable price?

£1 - £1.50 [  ] £1.50 - £2 [  ] £2.50 - £3 [  ] £3.50 + [  ]

2.       Would you like to read about up and coming artists?

Yes – More than mainstream artists [  ] No – I’m not interested [  ] Both [  ]

3.       Are you more interested in bands or individual artists?

Bands [  ]  Individual artists [  ]  Both [  ]

4.       Do you prefer a light hearted magazine or a more serious one?

Light hearted [  ]  A serious one [  ]

5.       What kind of music do you like? (You may choose more than one)

R&B [  ]                                   Garage [  ]                All of the above [ ]

Rock [  ]                                  House [  ]                  Other [  ]

Alternative rock/soul [  ]     Motown [  ]

Rap [  ]                                    Pop [  ]      

6.       Would you like it to focus on Britain’s artists or would you like it to include international musicians?

Yes [  ] No [  ]

7.       Which of the following do you find the most appealing?

Freebies [  ]  Competitions [  ]  Special price offer [  ]

8.       In a music magazine, which do you find the most interesting? You may choose more than one.

Gig reviews [  ] In depth articles [  ] Pictures [  ] Exclusive interviews [  ]


I used an online information gathering website called Survey Monkey to gage the interest of a sample of the public. Here's the link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X5PXNPX