I surveyed my target audience to gain information on how to construct a magazine and what they would expect from it.

1. SECONDARY
AND PRIMARY
DATA
MEDIA
STUDIES
A LEVEL

2. DATA RESEARCH
AIMS
As a part of my coursework, I was set the task to create a
music magazine with a genre of my choice. To begin with
I had to come up with a genre of my choice and then
begin reading into this genre. For example, the genre I
worked with was hip hop and R&B, so I immediately
started researching who read these magazines, the
prices, the style etc. To do this I carried out a quantitative
audience survey. Through creating this survey I developed
a stronger knowledge on my chosen target audience, in
which it was young teens and adults around the age of
17-20. So around the Sixth form and University stages of
their lives. Throughout these questions I focused on things
such as price, what they look like, their favourite musical
artists and much more. To contrast with my answers and
to see that my target audience was the best age range to
use for my genre of magazine I also asked a group of
adult of around their mid 40’s to see how different or
even the same their answers may be. This helps me as I
can see what I need to include in my magazine and what
is not necessary. As a whole the results from the survey
will help me as I now have qualitative data in producing
my magazine. Qualitative, quantitative, primary and
secondary??

3. AUDIENCE
PROFILE
My target audience for my music magazine is directed at people that listen to hip
hop, R&B and Rap. As these are three different genres but also link there are
many different artists which fall under these genres. Such as, Fetty Wap, Chris
Brown, Taylor Swift etc. So there is a wide variety of artists that may feature in
this music magazine. I also feel by having three different genres not only makes
the magazine instantly more interesting and enjoyable but also stretches over a
wide variety of people that listen to all or some of these genres. Approaching my
target audience will also be quite straight forward due to the fact that a large
majority listen to this genre today. For example, the rap artist Chris Brown racked
up to number one on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums Chart as ‘Royalty’.
162,000 copies were sold in just one week and this is his sixth number one on
the ranking. Another example, is the famous rapper/hip hop artist Nicki Minaj.
Her album stayed at number two consecutively for three weeks. She sold a
massive 354,477 of her album ‘Pink Print’
Today (27/04/2016) the highest hip hop album stands at number 5 which is
Justin Bieber’s album ‘Purpose’ having jumped up from seven. However, the
alternative rock band ‘Cold Play’ is only at number 11 with the album ‘A head full
of dreams’. The album ‘Purpose’ was released on November 13th 2015 and is
still fourth in the charts, whereas ‘A head full of dreams’ was released on
December 4th 2015 and are still only at number 11, having dropped quite rapidly.
These statistics show the large advantage I have. My target audience is for a
mainstream magazine. With these statistics, it shows how largely this specific
genre over powers certain genres. Like rock band tend to have a niche audience,
having a specific range of music. Whereas hip ho and R&B can be a wide range,
therefore having a mainstream audience as it suits a large different range of
people. From 40 year old mothers singing a long to Little Mix with their children.
Or 17 year old teenage boys rapping along to Eminem. There is a large variety of
songs.

4. PRIMARY
DATA
For our primary data I put together a
10 question survey based around my
genre. I asked around 40-50 people.
Asking a larger group gives a more of
a reliable source of information
helping towards having a reliable
magazine.

5. WHAT IS
YOUR
GENDER?
From my results I can see that the majority of the people that took part in my survey were female.
However, my main focus will be on the expectations of a male and female audience. Therefore I have to
appeal to both male and female demographic through different techniques. For example, I will use a
range of neutral colours like burgundy, black, white and yellows. This therefore appeals to both genders
as there isn’t the stereotype placed that boys relate to blue, and girls relate to pink. Another way is
having different magazine articles which relate to both genders, like the news on recent artists and recent
chart updates. I will include stories of male and female artists and also mixed bands. This appeals to
both genders also because I am including articles that both female and male can relate to. A final reason
is by contradicting the male gaze. The artist on my front cover will be female, therefore not only will men
feel intimidated they will want to read more about why I have decided to push the idea of the male gaze
away and why is this artist so powerful? Also females will be intrigued to find out more as they love the
idea of women becoming independent and not reliant on men, they want to feed off of this power which
will again intrigue them to read and find out how to become so powerful.

6. WHAT COLOURS GO
BEST TOGETHER?
These results show what colour schemes were most favourable.
The results show that half of my audience prefer the colour scheme
‘red, white, black and purple’ . Red, white and black are the
conventional colour palette of rock magazines. However, having
included the colour ‘purple’ which tends to relate to hip hop
magazines, I will create something more non-formulaic by
approaching both rock and my chosen genre. So not only am I
approaching a small niche audience of rock fans. I also still have
the grasp of my target audiences attention. The other colours got
less results, the colour scheme ‘light blue, yellow, black and white’
only had 7 votes. I feel that the colour that lowered this number
was yellow because of the fact that it doesn’t match with the colour
scheme as a whole. This may be due to the fact as I wasn’t
specific with colours, the yellow I had in mind was more of a royal
gold however my audience may have imagined a lemon yellow,
which can be seen as quite childish. Also the final colour scheme
chosen had 12 votes and this was due to the fact that the colour
grey is a very boring and dull colour My magazine would lack
excitement and would bore my audience.

7. WHAT’S YOUR
FAVOURITE
ANIMAL?
11 people chose a dolphin and 10 people chose a monkey. I asked
this question for various reasons, I wanted to learn more about my
audiences personality but in an indirect, humorous way. Presumably,
the boys chose a monkey and the girls chose a dolphin. Monkeys
have the view of being quite masculine and cheeky. Boys relate to
this as they are rebellious and like the idea of being masculine and
having power. Dolphins are very loving, caring and friendly animals
which stereotypically are the traits girls usually adopt. They are
much more emotional than men therefore they would have chosen
the dolphin because they also relate to it. Other animals say different
things about a personality also. For example, the shark got only 5
votes, assuming these are boys, this comes across as an immature
decision, the idea that sharks are killers and powerful makes you feel
strong and as if you rule the world. When realistically this may never
happen, therefore choosing this means you have no sense of reality.
Other people choosing animals like a parrot or a giraffe like to be
different. They like the sense of being unique and not choosing the
same animal as everyone else just so that they stand out.

8. WHO IS YOUR
FAVOURITE MUSIC
ARTIST?
The results give me a variety of answers. J hus, the
famous underground rap artist was voted for by 15 people
with a percentage of 39%. This shows that my audience
are favorable of this type of music, which is what I am
aiming for. However, the pop artist Ed Sheeran had been
voted for by 13 people with a percentage of 34%. This
shows that I have a mixture of a mainstream audience
and an underground music audience. Therefore in my
magazine I will include information on artists such as J
Hus and Ed Sheeran because I then have an
understanding of what my audience is expecting and who
they enjoy reading about.

9. SECONDARY
DATA
For our secondary data we researched statistics which relate to our
magazine. For example here you can see the amount of 16-24 year
olds who use the internet separated by gender. As you can see 99.1%
of males aged 16-24 used the internet but women used more with a
percentage of 99.3%. This is because of things like boys go out more
to play football, play video games or go out with their friends. Whereas
girls do not necessarily have a hobby. Therefore, they use their spare
time blogging, watching YouTube videos, online shopping or using
social media websites. Therefore, I will approach my audience through
a multi platform approach. To have more sales on my magazine, I will
include things such as free downloads, I will have a webpage and a
link to this in my magazine. Websites such as Twitter and Facebook
which tend to be favoured by young adults. I will use social media also
to spread my magazine further. My audience also have access to the
internet much easier now as the internet has become more or less
infinite. Therefore as a whole I need to use a multi platform approach
to reach fragmented audiences and also promoting synergy.

10. CONCLUSION/
SUMMARY
As a whole the results I have gathered will help me with
producing my magazine because I know what my target audience
are expecting and what they want. It has helped me to gain a
stronger knowledge of what my target audience wants and what
they like. Therefore I can create my magazine using prior
knowledge, the knowledge I have gained from my survey and
then I can produce a magazine that caters to all of my target
audience.