Target Audience- Internet Research

Audience

Q Magazine Q's audience is composed of passionate, engaged and open minded music fans driven to continually discover new music - and to use this lust for discovery to influence their friends. The audience is split 75% male to 25% female and is affluent (with 68% ABC1). (http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Brands/Q/)

Some critics and readers of the magazine have believed that it has lost its edge, and is now opting to play safe with who and what it covers, focusing more on the popularity of bands rather than their music. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(magazine)

From finding this information I can see that Q Magazine mainly targets men. They aim to attract their audience by including the newest and most popular music around, which some criticise as playing safe and "losing it's edge". Originally (from prior research) Q used to particularly focus on rock music, but changed it's style in order to widen it's market.
(http://www.mediauk.com/magazines/36219/q/readership-figures)



Clash Magazine is a completely independent magazine based in Dundee. It's content is varied although it focuses around music, fashion and brand culture aimed at a fun loving and intelligent audience...
CIRCULATION: 50.000



NME

NME is a music magazine that targets mainly men between the ages of 17-30, it targets people between the lower middle class, skilled working class and working class. NME stands for ‘New Musical Express’ and has been going for 60 years which means that different varieties of celebrities have featured on the front cover. As it is called ‘New Musical Express’ it ultimately provides information about new music and bands. Over the 60 years of existence, people such as Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones have featured on the front of the magazine, although it is usually men on the front of the magazine, women such as Grace Jones and Madonna have also featured on the front and more recently people such as Lana del rey and Lily Allen have appeared on there. Many different bands and people from all over the world have featured on the front, which means it actually targets people from various countries. NME are quite clever by using bands and artists that are well known because they are the people that will target many people as they are the celebrities that consumers will want to read and know about, it also provides information about up coming gigs which is beneficial to readers who are interested in them.

(http://www.mediauk.com/magazines/36168/nme/readership-figures)

My Thoughts...

Here is the internet research I have carried out in order to gain an understanding of various magazine's target audiences. Overall I have found that, in terms of Audience Profiles, men are usually targeted more than women for music magazines therefore I perhaps would like to create a magazine which I want to mainly aim at women (however not cutting out the male market). I have also noticed that in terms of genre, the magazines I have looked at have all seemed to follow chart and popular music therefore I would like to perhaps focus on Alternative music also including big names and popular artists. This however may be a difficult option as I have found often magazines have had to change their original styles and focuses in order to make their audience wider (by including chart/popular aspects).