How Research will Inform Planning

How Research will Inform Planning

My research on music magazines has helped me to understand what the target audience of my magazine enjoys to see on their favorite music magazines. My questionnaire has helped identify specific criteria that I can include within my magazine front cover, contents pages and the double page spread.

I carried out my questionnaire on 30 people, 17 of the people were female whilst 13 were males. The majority of people who answered my questionnaire were between 16-17 but the overall ages asked were 15-21, limiting the questionnaire answers to the older teen market will mean that the results will only be aimed at the target audience for my magazine, this will help me greatly. 

My questionnaire helped me identify that the most popular genre of music for this age is Indie music, the second most popular was pop, this got me thinking as I could think of many Indie magazines for teenagers but not so many pop magazines for the older teen. For this reason I want to create a pop music magazine aimed at the older teen market 16+ as the pop music magazines are aimed more at the children's and younger teen market. Everyone I asked had read a music magazine at some point, although not all buy a music magazine regularly so I will try and create a pop music magazine that the audience will want to buy and read. 

My questionnaire helped my find out that the main reason people read music magazines are because peoples favorite bands and artists are featuring in the magazine, it is for this reason that it'll be important for me to feature images and pull quotes from popular pop icons on my front cover and my contents page. The price most people are willing to pay for a music magazine is £1.10-£2 it is for this reason that I will advertise my music magazine to be within this price. 

Answers from my questionnaire also showed that people are mostly drawn to a music magazine because of the image of a band/artist on the front cover, also the name of the magazine and pull quotes from a story inside. So to ensure that my magazine looks appealing these are all features I will include on my front cover. I found out most people buy music magazines in supermarkets so this is where I will aim for my music magazine to be sold, I would want my pop music magazine to be kept away from the children's pop magazines so the reader doesn't feel like this is just another pop magazine aimed at children. 

I also found out from my questionnaire that people prefer images to text when reading a double page spread, I will bare this in mind when creating my own double page spread. There were a mixture of people preferring known to unknown artists in a magazine, so to easily please everyone I could include a mixture of known and unknown artists within the magazine. People also answered that they enjoy interviews with celebrities to be included in a music magazine, I can do this on my double page spread so I know the double page spread will be entertaining for the readers.

My questionnaire has helped me identify the type of music magazine I wish to create. I want to create a sophisticated,entertaining pop music magazine for the older teen. I feel there is a gap in the market for this type of magazine as at the moment in shops pop magazine are aimed at children to younger teenagers. I think I can achieve this aim effectively by choosing a sophisticated colour scheme, use of language, images, specific contents and the price. If these specifications are done hopefully I would have created an enjoyable pop music magazine for the audience of 16+ girls.