Music magazine - audience research

Target Audience Definition:

A  group of people of whom the type of media is aimed at and consume a product. It is based on age, gender, interests. The media will adapt and change their techniques to base and appeal to their audience. An example of a target audience would be women aged 25-40 for a women's weekly magazine.

Stereotypical audiences

Chart music

The general characteristics of a chart music listener is a mixed gender audience, percentage wise their is a larger number of females, though this is unnoticeable from the wider image. A stereotyped chart music listener are teenagers to middle aged adults, so it has a wide audience margin. The traditional chart music listener is difficult to group due to fashion choices, as it is what society would see as a norm, rather casual. The jobs of these music listeners are also unidentifiable, although part-time work would be seen as the usual position for these candidates. Fashion shops like   for females and top man for males, as well as river island and Miss selfridge. Also food shops would include of Tesco's, stereotypically. 

An example of these audiences are:

Pop music 

The general characteristics of a pop music listener are young female teenagers, between the ages of 7-16 year old, on estimation. This shows that this genre has a younger fan base than the other genres such as rock and country, and it's rare for a genre to be female dominated.  Fashion shops for this particular audience are places like new look. They, stereotypically would wear 'girly' outfits, inclusive of dresses, shorts and crop tops. Most photos that represent pop fans show the extent that these fans go to for their idols, crying like the photo below.

An example of pop fans would be:

Rock music

Rock music is a popular genre of music which was first came across as 'rock and roll' in the 1950s. Rock and Roll can be put into sub-categories, these include of Folk Rock and Indie Rock. The stereotypical target audience for rock would be someone aged between 16-28 years old, on estimation. predominately male. However today there is a wider target audience for rock music as it is so popular and consists of different styles. The stereotypical clothing and outfits a rock listener would wear would be black or dark clothes and/or make up with leather and chains. Other things that rock fans could wear is Skinny Jeans, Ripped clothing and Piercings.

An example of a rock fan would be:

Country music

 

Country music is a popular genre of music in America. Originated in southern America in the 1930s. Country music often consists of Ballard's and dance tunes. The target audience of country music would be both male and females aged between 25-60 on estimate. I think that country music is mainly enjoyed by those older aged however in the southern countries is also seen like being chart  music so many ages would probably enjoy it. They are likely to wear cowboys hats and chequered shirts.

 

Choosing a genre

Once stereotyping various different genres, I realised i wanted to combine two different genres together. I knew 'pop' music has a mass market and was a genre I was personally interested in but I felt combining it with another genre would minimise my target audience and not make it so general. I looked into the genre of country and felt famous artists such a Taylor swift and Mumford and Sons demonstrate this genre well and their is music is in the charts.

Case study: Taylor Swift

Taylor Alison Swift was born in December 13, 1989. She is an American singer - songwriter who was raised in Wymissing, Pennsylvania. Taylor Swift moved to Nashville, tennessee at the age of 14 in order to pursue a career in country music. She got singed with the independent label 'Big Machine Records' and then became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. Taylor's Album was released in 2006 ( self titled debut album) and established her as a country music star. 'Our song', which was her third single, made her the youngest person to single - handedly write and perform her number one song on the Hot Country songs chart.

She also received a Best New Artist nomination at the 2008 Grammy's. Which has led to many winnings of Grammy's more recently, for example her second album 'fearless' has won 4 Grammy awards.   To date, she has sold over 26 million albums and 75 million digital single downloads, making her one of the best selling artists of all time.


To ensure their would be a market for this genre I created a questionnaire so that I could identify the space in the market and see where my music magazine would fit specially with such a niche genre.  

Here is an example of the questionnaire:

Questionnaire results: 

 Question 1) Male/female 

The majority of people who answered my questionnaire were female, as they were more interested. ( 5 - male 10 - female ) 












Question 3) What is your favourite genre of music?

The highest percentage of favourite genre's was pop music. This was then followed by other which included house mainly and also country music. 











Question 6) What country - pop artists do you know? 

These were the country - pop artists named with a large percentage of people saying Taylor Swift ( 14 out of 15) closely followed by Mumford and Sons and Elvis. 











Question 7) Would you buy a Country - pop magazine? 

Over 3/4 of people said 'yes' to that they would buy a country pop magazine. (12 out of 15 people) 











Question 8) How much would you pay? 

The only two options selected were under £1 and between £1 and £2. With 14 out of 15 people saying between one and two pounds. 

 

Videos representing my music genre and stereotypically the audience: