Target Audience Research

For my audience research, I needed to find out a lot of information in order to get an idea of the most popular features and characteristics of magazines. This is so that more people would be willing to buy my magazine, due to being happy with many aspects such as price, contents and genre. I thought the easiest way to do this would be to write a questionnaire and get a large number of people to do it, therefore i would get a fair sample and more reliable results. I wrote a questionnaire and asked 20 people the following questions...

Questionnaire
1-What is your preferred genre of music magazines to buy?
General/Pop, Rock, Metal, RnB/Hip-Hop/Other

2- How much would you be willing to pay for a magazine?
£1-2, £2-3, £3+

3- How often do you purchase music magazines?
Every Week, Month, Few Months, Year, Never

4- What music magazines have you read before?
NME, Q, Smash Hits, Blender, Other, None

5- What artist do you most like?
Lady Gaga, Eminem, My Chemical Romance, Ne-Yo, None At All

6- What colour scheme would you most like to see?
Pastel, Florescent, Black + White, Bright, Other

7- What would you most like to see in the magazine?
Interviews, CD + Band Reviews, Competitions, Freebies, Gossip

8- Would you prefer a magazine based on one genre or a mixture?
One Genre, Mixture, Dont Mind

9- Do advertisements in magazines appeal to you at all?
Yes, Sometimes, No

10- Do you think the market for music magazines is too small, the right size or too large?
Too Small, Right Size, Too Large

I also held an interview with a media student from another class, Jordan Brett.
"Do you read any music magazines?"
- I used to, but not anymore. It cost me too much in the long run because i bought them quite often and they werent worth the money.
"What ones did you read?"
- NME mostly, i used to get a different one each week so i could see what was available in the market but i found NME was the one i liked most because it had a lot in and what it contained appealed to me and suited my tastes in music.
"What is your taste in music?"
- I like a lot of the rock and indie bands that the magazine features, such as The Last Shadow Puppets and The White Stripes. Im very versatile.
"Do you think it would be a good idea to have one genre then or a mixture?"
- I'd quite like a mixture really, it'd be different to most of the magazines in the market at the moment because none of them really do that, it would be a unique selling point.
"What would you expect to find in a music magazine?"
- Interviews with well known bands, information about upcoming bands and music and albums to buy, tour information and recent photos. Maybe competitions sometimes to meet a band or something.
"What sort of colour scheme would appeal to you most?"
- Something bright i think because it connotes fun and cool, it lets you know the magazine isnt going to be boring. I think graphics give across this message aswell, people our age like a bit of colour.

Results-
My Questionnaire and interview tells me that most people would prefer a magazine about general music and pop which costs between £2-3. A large percentage of people who took my questionnaire bought music magazines monthly and the most popular was NME however the most popular artist was Lady Gaga, which brings a slight variation between the two genres of music. People would most like to see a bright colour scheme and a mixed genre magazine rather than one- this refers back to the general music/pop on question 1. Interviews and CD + Band reviews is what people would most like to see inside the magazine and the advertisements in magazines only appeal to the audience some of the time. This means i can afford to have a smaller amount of advertisements in my magazine than others do, as they take up a lot of pages and most people turn past them a large amount of the time. Most people said they found that the market for music magazines at the moment is too large, but in the interview it is revealed that people would like to see more magazines that specialise in a mixture of genres rather than one. This could provide me with an advantange.