Market Research

To research the market I developed a questionaire which included questions to find out what people wanted to read about. To make it easy for the people doing my questionaire I tried to make the questions simple. I asked a selection of people to answer the questions and made it so they could circle answers. I used a group of teens, between the ages of 16-18 with mixed genders and sexualitys, this is going to be the target market for m y magazine. Some questions provided them with the opportunity to circle more than one answer, and some just one answer.

1)What genre(s) of music is your preferred choice?

This question gave people the chance to circle more than one answer. I decided to do this so I could get a wider view of which music styles are popular. As we can see from the graph here, Chart music is the most popular, with Blues, Reggae, Jazz and Heavy Metal being the least favourite. These genre's were not my first choice for my music magazine and from these results, I can see that they wouldn't be succesful, so there isn't a gap in the market. This is the same case for Classic pop/rock, and although it is slightly more popular than the other genre's I still don't think there would be a gap for a magazine here either. Indie and Hip Hop came next, with double the amount of votes than Classic pop/rock, these were shortly followed by Dance music. These are the sort of genre's I was considering looking at using for my magazine and I can see that there is a bigger market for them than Blues etc. Chart music, which proved most popular suprised me because through previous research I found that there weren't any current magazines of this genre. Due to the amount of people interested in this genre I feel there is a gap in the market.
2)From the current market which music magazine is your favourite/would you most prefer to read?

For this question I specified that my target market gave one answer so I could get a clear idea of which magazines are popular.  NME proved to be the most popular music magazine out of the selection of people I asked. I think this is due to the fact that it has been around for 58 years and has earned itself a big name. It features a lot of Indie music within the magazine and as demonstrated in the pie chart for question 1, it is clear that indie music covers a wide range of the music people like to listen too. With Q magazine shortly following, again a magazine featuring Indie music. Although it does include different music, and is known for its vast aray of different genres featured. MOJO has the least votes, this is because NME is from a larger media group and has the ability to provide itself to a larger target market.
3)What are you most interested in reading about from a music magazine?

For this question I gave people the option to circle more than one answer, to give me a wider idea of what people want to read about, and to give me ideas for my double page spread. The answer that provided the biggest result was festivals. I wasn't suprised by this as it is a topic that appeals to many people. It suprised me that current bands/artists was less popular than new bands/artists, but this has influenced my ideas for the double page spread. I wasn't suprised that people didn't want to read about Music TV shows (such as X-Factor) as it is the sort of thing you buy a celebrity magazine such as OK! to read about. The response to the other sections were fairly balanced and to include these in my magazine, I'll include these as 'featured articles' on my front page and contents page.

4)How often would you buy a music magazine?

The results from this question clearly show that a weekly magazine are not desirable. My audience were asked to select one of the answers, and because weekly was not choosen by one person, I know that the contents of my double page spread is going to have to include an atricle that will be re-readable, as the magazine isn't going to be highly disposable and has longevity.

5)What name do you prefer?

To gather these results I asked the volunteers doing my questionnaire to provide one answer only. Clearly Pause is the biggest choice, followed by Emerge, followed by Volume. I didn't limit this question to three choices, i also had the names of Thrash, Composition, Playlist and Alternative, except these choices ot no votes, therefore I choose to leave them out of the pie chart to make it visably clearer which was more popular.

From my market research I have gained knowledge about what my target market want to read about in a music magazine, I have also learned about the genres of music most popular within my group of volunteers. Every question was designed with the ability to influence my choices when it comes to doing my photoshoot and designing my magazine.