My Target Audience

Target Audience

The genre of my magazine is R&B/Hip Hop, which has gained a lot of attention over the past year creating its mass market. Therefore the target audience of my music magazine will be from the age of 17 to 22, I based this age gap on the results that i received from my both qualitative and quantitative research, as well as the harsh language that is said during most of the songs. Since my magazine will be published monthly, this would make it seem more musically fashionable hence it being sold in both online and higher end shops such as WHSmith or Borders.

Since my target group are between the ages of 17-22, I think I would find it easier to communicate with them through a less formal tone. Using words that are most commonly used between young adults would help me to keep my target audience interested as it’s written in a way they can easily relate to and understand. However since the magazine’s aim is to e of the targeted readers interest, I think ranging the sentence lengths would put the magazine at an advantage, since when it comes to something interesting the more information the better. Although they aren't’ grownups yet, their attention spam’s aren't that big yet, therefore the sentence ranges would add to attracting their attention as they read.

My Decisions

My Decisions Based on Results

In order to gain a better idea of how I would present my magazine in a way that my target audience would be satisfied, I decided to create some questionnaires. From the questionnaires I collected to the data numerically, and have now come up with the decisions based on the questions answered.

The first question I asked was to find out the age group of each participant, which gave me the idea of making my magazines target group for young adults but considering that how close the percentages were between 14-17 and 18-22, I should extend my target groups so that not only young adults find interest in my magazine but also teenagers at the ages of 16 and 17. I think monthly would also make my magazine seem musically fashionable as well as limited for my targeted readers to purchase. Price was also a price that had to be asked as 34% chose the price of £3.99, which was the price I had originally wanted my magazine to but wasn't so sure whether it was too high or not. I think that this would be a suitable price as it would add to the target audience’s idea of how limited and authentic the magazine is.

Regarding the magazine’s house style, I decided to go with black, grey and red based on the comments that were left underneath which were:

·         -‘Red and yellow would cause a clash between the colors would also clash, lowering the magazines professionalism’.

·         ‘Gold and black is too simple.’

·         ‘Black, grey and red- black and grey would cause a slight clash- black and grey are too similar of color’.

·         ‘Black, white and red- a perfect combination of colors, these would fit perfectly with your magazines genre which is R%B/Hip Hop, these would show the R&B/Hip Hop originality, the colors are both simple and powerful just like the genre you have picked’.

For the star image I didn't know whether to go with female or male as R&B/Hip Hop has both, however the percentages for this question were both quite close; however there was a higher percentage of male answering this question rather than female, leaving me with the option of making my star image a female.  Considering it’s an R&B/Hip Hop magazine, the model will be wearing tight cloths with her makeup done properly with 1 or 2 pieces of jewelry.

From the data there was a clear winner on the Masthead I should choose which was TAKEOVER based on percentages as well as the comet let by the participants:

·          ‘The letter ‘X’ would be seen as trying too hard to seem different from original magazines.

·         ‘It should be a word that not many people use but would recognize easily’.

·         ‘The word ‘lifestyle’ would give some readers the impression that it would be for houses, how to improve their lifestyle or furniture- that the ‘Lifestyle’ doesn't relate to music or even R&B/Hip Hop’.

Although it’s a music magazine, I thought that there should be some other topics in the context of my magazine in order to keep the readers interested for example a featuring artist. One thing that I noticed after looking at my data is that I had put music as an option for the people that I questioned to pick. It’s already a music magazine, therefore music would already be a part of it and I recognized this as one of the mistakes that I had made. However 33% of my questioners had picked music as a main topic they would like to in the magazine, as well as 25% wanted to see the featured artist’s interview. I then decided that my magazines main focus would be on new music coming out as well as what some artists are working on. When it came to the artists lifestyles I also saw in my data that 17% wanted to see the featuring artist’s lifestyle, which gave me the idea of how I could put both artists lifestyle and interview together. I could present the interview on my double page spread capturing my model in a setting looking like a house, with the interview based on both music and lifestyle giving the main 75% their main interest.

My Questionnaire Results

Magazine Questionnaire

Questionnaire

In order to find out more information about my target audience I have already carried out my secondary and qualitative research, now I designed this magazine question in order to get some primary and quantitative research on my music magazine.

Demographics

Target Audience Research

Demographics are the measurable characteristics of media consumers such as age, gender, race, education and income level. A magazine that I found of similar music genre was XXL. The general target audience for XXL magazine is 80% AND 20% female, with a market price of $5.99. XXL is the number 1 selling magazine on the newsstand which outsells magazines like Rolling Stone, VIBE, and Spin.

From XXL’s demographics, I can see that they have 78% males as their target audience therefore I will be using a female to be on my music magazines cover, as the men will see her as an object to desire. She’ll be pictured sexually with some tight cloths on with her make up done. However she won’t look too sexual as this would disturb the 22% of their target audience of females there are. The average age of their target audience are 50% between 21- 29, therefore I’ll be able to use less formal language and more of the day to day slang words in the magazines context.