Psychographic Profiling

Pop magazines appeal to 3 Psychographic groups:

Aspirers, Explorers and Reformers.

Aspirers group link to pop music due to them being geared towards fashion and the type of artists within this genre of music.

Explorers are young, energetic and want to seek a variety of songs.

Finally Reformers are free from restrictions and like to explore with no judgements, linking to the non restricted genre.

Pop Magazine Audience Research

We Love Pop:
The majority audience for this magazine is mainly girls who are of the age of 13-15. This audience collates to a reader total of 135,000 and their social class is C1-E. Due to the successful publisher Egmont their circulation figures have hit 42,864 per month.

Top Of The Pops:
Similar to WeLovePop over 3 1/4 of the readers are female, with the age of 11 to 14. However their Reader total is over double the amount at 357,000 people, which brings in 78,352 people every month. Their social class varies from ABC1 and AB.

Billboard:
In contrast to the other 2 the 48,000 people are equally split between females and males. These people are between 20-60 with them being a social class of A-B. 65,308 Circulations per month.

Demographic Target Audience Profile

Genre: Pop

Class: My Primary target audience will be, E within the NRS social grade.

Gender: Evenly split males and females

Age: 15 to 30

Nationality: British

Ethnicity: Any but will be mainly white british

Sexuality:Asexual, Bisexual, Gay, Homosexual and Heterosexual

Audience Appeal: My magazine appeals to people with an interest in current and trending style music/artists.

Analysis of the background of a magazine publisher from my sub-genre

POP:

Billboard
This is some statistics and facts about the Pop Magazine Billboard, this is who I intend to use as my inspiration for my magazine.


















Billboard are Primarily published by Prometheus Global Media, these are a well known and successful publisher for magazines. However Egmont and BBC also publish Pop magazine that are of this league.

Differences from online and printed magazines

• Online media is cheaper than printed media in the long run with subscriptions and offers available.
• Online content allows you to interact with the media with links to websites and other content.
• The online magazine will be available on any device with Internet connection and it can be downloaded, this means less space taken up by paper.
• magazines are more commonly advertised in shops which can entice people to buy them.
• These magazines can come with samples within the packaging, this looks appealing to the public due to an extra item for the price of the magazine.
• Magazines can come with a offer to a subscription to the online version which means they get the best of both platforms.

Institution Research

Bauer Media Group are Europe's leading and largest publishing group. This group is world wide and privately owned, and majorly successful with over 300 magazines in more than 15 countries. This magazines are not just paper but also cross platform offerings such as Digital, Radio and Television. 

This connection of audiences through multi platforms allows for there funding and success with over companies. 

Bauer have had connections with many magazines and companies such as Empire, Mcn Sport and Land Rover International. However in linking with Music they have been linked with Kerrang and Q magazines. In addition their Music connections are more popular on the radio and digital side, Such stations include Absolute radio and Kiss. I believe this is due to people listing to the radio in the car from work.

Due to this mass amount of platforms and types the age range from 18 to 55+ of both genders are covered. These might not all be music but this helps to give a good name to their business.

Talking about their audience, For 'Q' they have a total of 377,000 people who watch, listen of read their magazine, With 68.3% of these people being Male and 31.7% of them are Female. In addition to this vastly Male audience they also have a more evenly based target audience within kerrang. Kerrang   have a mass audience total of 345,000 with 54.7% of them being male and 45.3% being Females.

Prometheus tries to engage its wide audience much like Bauer with Music, Media and Entertainment. Again they are a leading business and media publisher with more than 1.5 million visitors every month. 

In addition to there 5 million monthly page views with 30,000 of these being paid members.

This shows that their online media is vastly more popular to their printed media with 60,000 people reading the magazines. 

The reasoning behind the bigger audience online is due to the magazines having a online bonus voucher which allows people to get a free online membership.

Prometheus are based in New York and they have successfully been able to get their media into 82 other countries. This popularity is shown in who they work for, people such as Billboard use Prometheus to gain their mass audiences.

This magazine differentiates to the other two groups as this one is very independent. A digital version of the magazine is also available.The wire has a monthly circulation of 20,000 people and a subscriber database of 9,000 people.

Even though this business is very small in comparison they are still running a profitable business, this is shown by there continual running from 1982 when it was founded. This success hasn't come from many recognisable media groups like Billboard but instead more Gigs,festivals and tours. One company they have published for is DF Concerts and Events.

DPS Analysis: We Love Pop

Contents Page Analysis: We Love Pop

Front Cover Analysis: We Love Pop

DPS Analysis: Billboard

Contents Page Analysis: Billboard

Front Cover Analysis: Billboard

My chosen Sub-Genre

I am going to choose a Pop style magazine, this is due to that being one of my favourite styles of music and the one I believe I can best create. I am going to link to Billboard as I prefer their colour palette and the layout they choose. In addition to this I will follow along with the traditional codes and conventions Pop magazines follow.

Music Magazine Sub-Genre Research

Pop:

The target audience for a Pop magazine is usually aimed at teenagers. These magazines are also aimed towards younger adults ( 22-33) which is shown from the way Billboard have designed and created there magazine. Billboards magazine are very unique in there layout, all there magazines are presented with a single image of a person on the front. This Image is surrounded with information and puffs. This differs to over magazines such as 'Sugar' who have used the same singular image but its in more of a background setting with a lot of cover lines over crowding the image. This layout and style differences show that 'sugar' is aiming towards the younger audience with the style of imagery and unprofessional layout, whereas 'Billboard' has a more professional vibe which will appeal to a wider range of people. This would suggest that the production value of 'Billboard' would be higher and 'sugar' would have a lower value.
Rock:

The audience profile for Kerrang is a 50/50 split between Male and Female, these genders are shown generally in the age range of 15-24. This varies from Classic Rock where the gender split is similar but the age range is 24-42. The wider range of age and gender is evident in magazines such as 'Kerrang'.  This age range is mainly younger adults to teenagers, this is predominately shown by the more modern style music which is less likely to be known by older adults.Further more the more Jumbled Cover lines won't appeal much to older adults who like simple, single photo front. This jumbled Front cover and the fact that younger people will view magazines on the Internet might show that the production value is lower for Kerrang. The majority of Rock magazines follow the same conventions for there colour palette, these colours tend to be White or a bold colour for the cover line. Furthermore the font used for rock magazines tend to be different throughout the magazine, this appeals less to me and the target audience. Kerrang has a lot of promotional puffs for the content of there magazine where Classic Rock is linking more towards the main topics.
Heavy Metal:

I believe that the heavy metal music genre is aimed at the older target audience as this genre, this is due to the year the songs came out.'Kerrang' and 'Q' are predominantly linked to the older are age, even though some of there content is aimed a younger adults to. Given the fact that these are aimed at the older audience, this could suggest that the production value is lower due to the demand and lack of popularity.The artist who are shown on the front cover are usually related to the heavy metal genre. These artists are popular to allow and pull in interest of the viewers.I dislike the layout of these style of magazines due to the overly crowded page which to me appears unprofessional and doesn't link with other magazines. Further more the amount of artists on the front page and pictures differs a lot from pop magazine where they take on only one to two artist with less photos around the subject.  As for colour palette I believe it is less appealing to the target audience due to the dark colours. Although its a heavy metal magazine which link with darker colour their is no brighter backgrounds or bright coloured mastheads which differs to magazines such as Kerrang.
Indie:

 

The primary target audience for Indie music magazines I believe is from ages 15-30 plus. Indie style music is shown at concerts, this shows its popularity. Furthermore they are growing in popularity every day. This would reflect there production value, I believe that their production value would be low due to the fact their income and fame is from festivals.As for colour palette  we can see a more subtle range of colours, some covers have only white or  singular colour text. Whereas some like on the right can be seen to have two colour for the text and a different colour like gold is used for the masthead. However comparing to over magazine they highly differentiate which connotes a calm and subtle magazine and audience. This along with the very simple and bland layout with a singular star vehicle connotes that maybe the production value is a lot lower on the magazine side of things. Whereas their concerts have a higher value as that is were their main interest comes from.
Hip/hop and rap:

 























The target audience of Hip Hop/Rap is popular with the younger audience. This is shown by the popular magazine 'Vibe', who use trending artists that are appealing to the growing teenage audience. Although the style of music differs the layout of the page is very similar to other music magazines like Billboard. Typically their is one artist in a medium close up format in the centre of the page. In addition the colour palette is very bold and inviting, by this I mean that the colours link with each other and the artist. For example the left magazine shows the artist is black and white, therefore the magazine cover lines are white to contrast the black background. As for the yellow this is a random pick of vibrant colours, but it still contrasts well with the darker background palette. As for the magazine on the right, it appears less professional with the colours, however all of the colour are linking with the black,white and green. The red does seem out of place but in fact that is the colour on all of their magazine mastheads. From this I can say that the matching colours and organised layout connotes the magazine will have a higher production value that others and therefore they have more money to improve the magazine and contents within.