Main Task: Audience Research

Here is a task in which I carried out for the planning and research stage of this task. I had to speak to my target audience which were teenagers. I had to speak to my target audience using electronic means to communicate with them.

To get an idea of what the audience of a music magazine wants, I did some of my own audience research. Here are a list of the questions I asked my audience:

1. What word(s) do you associate with pop music? 2. When looking at a front cover of a magazine, what draws you in, the text or image(s)?
3. Do you think specific genres of music magazines should target only a specific audience or all? If so, which target audience? Children, teens, or adults? 4. Looking at these different font styles, which one do you think would go well on a pop magazine?
5. Which colour scheme would be more appealing to you on a magazine?
6. Look at these different magazine front covers, which one do you like the most?
7. Looking at these pre-mock up sketches of possible layouts for a magazine front cover, which one do you like best?
8. Would you be interested in reading stories or profiles of upcoming artists?
9. On a contents page do you like to see the features in columns or widely spread?
10. Here are some fonts, which one do you prefer?
11. About how much would you spend on a music magazine? £1, £2, £3, £4
12. Do you like to see a Q & A sections in magazines?
13. What one artist(s)/bands from the following do you listen to? Justin Bieber, Rihanna, LMFAO, Bruno Mars, One Direction.
I then collated the research I found out using MSN messenger and Blackberry Messenger. Here are some of the responses from the people that I asked. The target audience ages ranges from approximately the ages 13-18.
Before I asked the audience questions, I prepared some typhography fonts, and a few possible colour schemes. Along with this I also produced some pre-mock up sketches.


Here are some of the main responses I gathered from the audience of people that I asked.

As you can see here, the majority of people I asked said that the images are what draws them in. Therefore I will also do this when I create my magazine I will also make sure the subject is the main thing that people see when they look at the cover.

There was a mixed response for weather or not magazines should be targeted at a specific audience but the majortiy of people said it shouldn't as everyone can read whatever they like. But I believe that certain magazines should be targeted at only a specific age group as for example: in a kids magazine, there are things like little games and the adverts are produced specifically for thier age group. Which is why, my music magazine will be also targeted at a specific age group because to target a wider range of people would be difficult as there would be content that would not be suitable for younger readers but for older readers it would be fine.

The way of collecting the research has to be electronic and closed questions because people would be telling me different answers and I would need to keep it limited so that my final product would be similar to the decisions made by the target audience.

For the font styles, most people chose Snap ITC, which is good as I also wanted to use this font for my magazine, reason being as it fits in with a sort of 'pop' style to it.

The responses for these were varied so I'll have to come to a desiscion for the colour scheme I will use. I will be using about 3-4 colours and they will be bright as 'pop' is bright.

All of the audience i asked wanted to see a Q & A section in the magazine, so this should be included somewhere on the Double Page Spread. The audience also want to see profiles of upcoming artists which might possibly be included within the magazine. The main price people would pay for a music magazine is about £2-£3 so my music magazine will also be within these price ranges. As many of the audience listen to some of the pop artists/bands I may include album reviews or the charts in the magazine also. The audience research was helpful as I learnt some things I would not have known if i didn't carry this out, so this has helped me greatly for the upcoming magazine that I will produce.