Magazine Research

At school, my class and I deconstructed a selection of magazines to uncover the different features that appeal to various audiences. We found out that the precision needed to focus on one particular demographic is very detailed, as one must consider multiple features including age, gender, interests, class, social status, music taste, appearance, dress sense and even average income. Something we discovered during the course of this research was the music magazine industry's failure to maintain a sufficient and steady number of customers. Statistics show that sales in the area have immensely plummeted over the last decade and are failing to regain these customers. However, certain magazines such as Future Publishing's 'Metal Hammer', has been doing evidently well considering the recent circumstances. Whereas music magazines like 'NME' are not doing quite so well. Also, even the countries biggest selling music magazine 'Q' lost a deposit of 13.8% of its readership in the alf year. The most failing music magazine last year was Bauer's 'Kerrang', which posted a 27.9% drop in readership by the end of 2007. This downfall has resulted in an increase in magazine prices, which therefore can also lose customers. As an attempt to regain some readership, Bauer's 'Q' announced a complete re-design of the cover and magazine.

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'NME' however, decided to take a different approach to increasing company income. The music magazine invested in re-launching their mobile website where the customers can now search for upcoming gigs using the gig guide, be the first to know about celebrity interviews and get discount to its Club NME nights and music and video downloads. Something else we established during our class research was the fragmentation of audience, which is making it increasingly harder for the production companies of music magazines in the present day to work with. This is due to the fact that they cannot decide which audience to focus their magazines on as the music taste of the general public has become much more varied. This leaves them with three options:

1) Keep focussing at the same group of people.

2) Decrease the target audience.

Or

3) Increase the target audience.

The first option will clearly make no change to the statistical data regarding company income and readership, however it will benefit the loyal buyers who like the magazine exactly the way it is. Option two will attract more buyers with selective interests. Lastly, option three could potentially gain more buyers by widening the target audience but could also lose loyal buyers. One of the central reasons for the huge loss of income within the music magazine industry is due to the alternative ways of gaining the information. Downloading has become extremely easy and also free when using certain illegal downloading programs such as Limewire and Ares. Another factor is promotional music sites such as Myspace, which has recently been updated to include a priced downloading feature. Radio and music television are also components, as they also include interviews and news concerning the music industry, thus stealing the music magazines audience.
We then had a discussion about re-designing a magazine. These are the ways that my classmates and I came up with to improve sales statistics:

- New layout/theme
- Feature news on both older and newer acts
- Introduce new fonts and colours and experiment with sizes
- Rid the magazine of unnecessary and unwanted advertisements
- Make the magazine cheaper
- Change weekly to monthly or vice versa
- Spend all the money on improving the website and pull t he magazine
- Make the magazine free and get more money from the advertisers

Next we read an 'NME' article to familiarise ourselves with the sort of content in a modern music magazine.

Questionnaires

I wrote two questionnaires to gather information from my peers. This was to give me insight as to what is and is not popular to the younger generation (my target audience). Here are two samples of the framework of my questionnaires:

Questionnaire – Music Magazine Content Research

1) What is your favourite music magazine?

2) Why?

3) How much are you willing to spend on a magazine?

4) Do you prefer weekly or monthly issues?

5) How else do you gain knowledge about music?

6) What genres of music do you listen to?

7) What is your favourite part of a music magazine?

8) What do you think makes a good music magazine cover?

9) Which features would put you off a music magazine?

10) What are your views on mixed genre magazines?


Finding a Target Audience – Questions

1. Are you male/female?

2. How old are you?

3. Are you in a relationship?

4. Do you have any siblings?

5. What is your favourite drink?

6. Do you go to parties?

7. What do you eat for breakfast?

8. Do you earn your own money?

9. How do you usually spend your weekend?

10. Who’s your idol?

From these questionnaires, I gained some very interesting. My results show that