Audience Research

I sent out an email attached with this questionnaire to an equal amount of males and females and more females have responded than males with a difference of double the amount of women responding than men. This could show that boys have less of an interest in music magazines or music in general meaning my target audience should perhaps be targeted at females. However, they are unaware of the genre of my magazine due to the questionnaire not mentioning it and from previous research it is clear that jazz and blues is more of a genre for middle aged men. This means the people I have asked are not an accurate representation of who I should be aiming my magazine at.

Similarly with the age, I only asked my peers meaning the information provided is not collected from the appropriate age range. However it did give me ideas on where not to advertise etc. due to things like SoundCloud and Spotify being more for the younger generation.

Within the graph you can see that people have selected more than one option showing that brand loyalty is not applicable in the music industry. This is a good thing as it illustrates that more than one place is viewed per person making advertising potentially quite successful. As well as this the amount of people listening to CDs in the 20th century is slim and only one person has admitted to it. This shows they aren’t as popular meaning the album should be primarily produced electronically on websites like Spotify.

The amount of people who buy music magazines is relatively low. This isn’t a problem due to the afore mentioned age difference between my target audience and who I actually questioned.

The most popular genre of music taken from this questionnaire is RnB. This isn’t surprising when you take into account the age of the people asked. Teenagers are more likely to be under the influence of chart music due to it being on the radio and easily the most publicised genre, along with Pop. This means it’ll ultimately become more popular. Fortunately, this age range isn’t the target audience for my magazine as my magazine is targeted at older men and perhaps women. So when taking into account the amount of females who responded over the males it’ll become clearer why jazz isn’t as popular-as well as the age. Alternative rock and indie also appear to quite popular which is due to them becoming more advertised and publicised on social media and are soon going to overtake RnB and Pop in terms of popularity.

The most popular radio station is Radio 1 with Heart coming in second place. This supports the afore mentioned support for pop and RnB in the music industry which are the most popular genres showed on these two leading stations. This makes it clear that music taste is influenced by radio stations and what they play. As well as this, radio stations like Jazz FM only have one person listening to it out of my (small) sampling of people. This further enforces the idea that jazz and blues music is not popular amongst our age group making it essential I target an older audience.

The most commonly mentioned essential feature for the front of a music magazine is a mention of images or pictures presumably of the artist or an instrument or both. This was an expected answer and would be the same kind of answers for that of an older generation as even though it asks for an opinion it isn’t an opinionated answer as it is quite obvious what should be on the front cover. As well as this, text, titles and straplines were mentioned which again, could go unsaid as they are relatively obvious things you need. The “persuasive strapline” is a vital answer as it urges the reader to pick up the magazine along with the catchy title and recognisable image in the foreground.

This is the most useful question with answers between £2 and £3 showing that the magazine needs to be of a much higher quality if there’s any hope for it selling for a higher price. However, £2.95 sounds like a reasonable price and fits within the price range selected. However, the age of the people asked is again an interfering factor as they may be less willing to spend any more due to having less money than that of someone who is older with a full time job. Then again I still think I should stay around the £3 region.

I had an additional question asking who their favourite musical artist was but the choices were too varied to provide a proper chart. It also wasn’t an entirely useful bunch of responses as no one mentioned anyone in the jazz and blues genre.