Research into Music Magazine's

Research for Target Audience

To research my target audience I’ve created a short survey with a few questions and published it onto my facebook profile so people could answer the survey. The questions I am going to include are what genre of rock people listen to, with suggestions, what age the participant is, with suggestions of age groups and finally if they are male or female. Here is my evidence of my survey in use:

Callum Sands This is for my Media Studies research, so please comment answering the following questions if you can:

What genre of rock do you prefer to listen to, if any?:
Alternative rock
Post-grunge
...Pop rock
Electronic rock
Screamo

What age are you?

13-19 20-30 31-40 41+

Are you male or female?

See MoreOctober 14 at 5:50pm · Comment · · View Feedback (4)Hide Feedback (4)

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    Aaron Moorhouse
    

    October 14 at 5:53pm ·

    
    

    What genre of rock do you prefer to listen to, if any?:
    Alternative Rock/ Post Grunge (I can't choose)
    
    What age are you?
    13-19
    ...
    Are you male or female?
    maleSee More
  • 
    

    Katie Mann METALLLLLLLL :)
    

    October 14 at 5:59pm ·
  • 
    

    Ryan Durkin Alternative rock
    13-19
    Male
    

    October 14 at 11:38pm ·
  • 
    

    Joanne Sands pop rock..36 female.
    

    October 15 at 2:15pm ·

The results from my survey show that the most favourite genre of rock people prefer/listen to is alternative rock. So now I have the genre of rock my magazine will be about. The age range the magazine will be aimed at is teenagers aged 13-19, as this was the age range that was most answered in the survey. The magazine will also be aimed at teenagers, from the results from the survey shown above.

Overall my magazine will be about and feature alternative rock and will be aimed at teenagers aged 13-19.

Research into Similar Products

I am going to get some examples of rock magazines, covering several genres, and I am going to compare and discuss the codes and conventions they share. Here are my examples of covers: 

One of the first things you notice about these magazines is that they only use a few colours in their text. NME uses the colours black, yellow and white where as Kerrang use red, white, black and brown. As you can see both magazines use white and black text at some point on the cover. Then they use another colour, typically a brighter colour, to allow important information to standout from both the rest of the text and the main cover image. Moving on to the main cover image, both covers featured a band or an artist that people know of or heard of in the rock industry. NME features rock icon Courtney Love where as Kerrang has chosen a more current recent artist to be featured, this being scream band Bring Me the Horizon. Both photographs take up the majority of the cover and are taken in a mid shot/close up, in particular NME where as Kerrang have other photographs of other artists or bands which are also featured in the magazine. This can also be an example of a plug being used on the cover of Kerrang, a plug is a convention that tells you what’s going to be featured in the magazine, so here its telling us that’s there a poster special. Other examples of plugs being used in Kerrang magazine include “Metallica Storm the UK” and the main cover article “Bring Me the Horizon Northern Uproar!” Examples of plugs used in NME include “Foals”, “Joy Division” and “Band of Horses” and the main cover article “In at the deep end Courtney Love”. Others examples of codes and conventions used in the magazine covers are as followed. In Kerrang there are examples of banners and puffs being used, an example of a banner being used is the banner featured at the top of the Kerrang cover and also at the bottom of the cover also a puff is used in the banner as well, “Plus!” is a puff as the single word stands out. In NME there is a banner featured at the top of the cover and like the bottom Kerrang banner it also feature a puff but this it is the word “FREE”. Another puff used on the cover of NME is “plus” but this puff is used in a plug which details other bands and artists featured in the article.

Research into the Genre of chosen Magazine

The results form my survey proved that alternative rock is the genre of rock that most people listen to. So now I am going to research into this genre giving an example of a magazine as well as describing the genre and including famous/current artists and bands in the alternative rock scene.

Alternative Rock

Alternative rock is a genre of rock that first came around in the 1980’s in the form of R.E.M. and then became more developed throughout the 1990’s. Alternative rock is infused with many other subgenres within itself including grunge, Goth and Indie. R.E.M. became one of the first big Alternative rock bands in 80’s and successfully breaking into the mainstream charts from the underground scene from which they were originally came from. Alternative rock had a fresh new face as it made a transition into the 90’s with breakthrough band Nirvana and later subgenres such as Britpop emerged with the likes of Oasis and Blur making a splash onto the charts. Nowadays alternative rock has taken form in the likes of The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more recently in 2010 The Pretty Reckless.

An example of an alternative rock magazine is Q magazine. Here is an example of a Q magazine cover:

As you can see it conveys the typical characteristics featured on a cover of a rock magazine.