My chosen music genre and target audience

After researching into the main existing publishing companies (Bauer, IPC and Conde Nast), I have decided to choose my genre of music as pop. This is the genre I am going to focus on and is the best to base my magazine on. I have made this decision as I believe there is a suitable gap in the market to aim my magazine at. My chosen target audience is based roughly in the range of 15-24 year old. I have chosen this target audience as there isn't hardly any magazines in this age ranged purely based on pop music. There is a few examples such as the X Factor magazine known as the "X magazine". This however is based on a TV show and doesn't focus on bands or solo singers who are already successful in the music industry or bands/solo artists that are featuring on the show. There is also magazines which still exist such as Top of The Pops, and some that don't exist such as Smash hits, which show the genre I am focusing on but are aimed at a younger target audience. I believe there should be a magazine aimed at people such as students about current pop bands. These may include artists such as The Saturdays, JLS, The Wanted, and solo singers such as Katy Perry and Pixie Lott. So therefore, this is why I have decided to choose my magazine genre as pop music and my target audience to be around 15-24. This then means I will be aiming at the people in categories E and D in the social grades classing.

Niche Audiences

I am going to now talk about niche audiences. This will benefit as it can show me who I should aim my magazine at and why I should aim it at that particular group.
Niche audiences in media terms are in which way the medias audiences is sectioned into different segments. The influences that could categorise someone into a group could depend on different tastes, concerns and interests. This could be a either a TV programme, a particular dress sense of a group of people. In my case i am focusing on niche audiences of people who have these different tastes, concerns or interests in music. An example of a niche audience is someone who subscribes for the magazine Gardeners World. This is how the media have segmented a particular niche market as this won't be aimed at everyone.
Demographics is another media term which can be used in finding out information in targeting a specific audience. This term means the collection of information about that particular market based on numbers. This can be then interpreted into a graph, this data could be either age, gender, profession, class or your income.
When categorising a group into ages, the commonly used figures are <15, 15-24, 24-35, 35-55 and 55 and over. This shows me people who create magazines have to think carefully about who they aim their magazine at. When categorising you can also see if male/female would be more likely to buy the magazine or whether the magazine would be aimed at both.
people can be also classed into groups such as social grades. This shows what percentage of people the population is made up of relating to profession.
A-Higher Managerial-3%
B-Intermediate Managerial-15%
C1-Supervisor/administrative-23%
C2-Semi-skilled workers-28%
D-Semi-skilled/un-skilled manual workers-18%
E-Unemployed/state pensioners/students-13%

Psychographics can also be known as qualitative research. This is the collection of information about the market based on subjective factors such as, opinions, beliefs, interests and reasons. This system gathers psychological information which is beneficial on creating a new or improving an existing magazine.
From understanding all of this information it shows me that it would be best to aim and target my magazine at semi-skilled workers and supervisor sections. It also tells me that it wouldn't be best if I aimed it at the higher managerial workers as that is a very hard niche audience to target as its is only containing 3% of people.

LIIAR interpretation of the brief double page spread

Now I am going to interpret LIIAR on what should be contained on a double page spread. These features I discuss should be contained in my music magazine Language-Language makes up the main part of the double page spread. The content of a double page spread will include again the consistent house style and the same colour scheme as the the two previous pages. This means the background, text colours and any other features that are used in previous pages should remain the same too. Images relating to the article should be used to make the text more appealing and attract the audience into reading it. If an article had just writing on the page/pages, it would be boring and not attract the audience into reading the magazine. The anchorage on a double page spread of a music magazine is really important as it what the whole page is based upon. There will be a main headline and this should be a bold piece of text that stands out and this can make the audience read further into the article. So therefore this means, it will relate to the main story on the front cover. There may be also snippets of the story in bold to again make the reader more engaged with the story. The story must be interesting and have gossip which makes the audience want to know more.
Institution-The institution of this again will be Bauer, which will publish all of my magazine including my front cover and my contents page.
Ideology-The meaning behind this double page spread will be what the article is about.
Audience-The audience I am aiming at for my double page spread is the same as my contents page and the same as what I discussed about in my interpretation of my front cover. This isn't going to change as I am going to aim it at the same audience.
Representation-The representation of my double page spread is the same as my contents page and the same as my representation on the front cover of my magazine.

LIIAR interpretation of the brief contents page

Now i am going to discuss the contents page of what a music magazine should contain. The format of LIIAR will again be used to interpret what features I could include on my contents page.
Language-The language contained on the contents page of a music magazine has many features. On a contents page there is a lot of written codes. Included in this are things such as the page numbers and what is contained on each page. There is often images on contents pages which illustrate who and what an article is about, further of in the magazine. They could be also advertisements on the page, which are usually found at the bottom of the page. The style of the contents page and colour scheme should be constant such as the background. And things such as the size and font should be the same as the front cover. This would show that I am keeping the format the same and this then makes the magazine look more professional and shows a consistent look throughout.
Institution-Now I have researched different types of publishing companies such as Bauer IPC and Conde Nast. I have decided to choose my publishing company as Bauer. I believe this publishing company is the best one as it shows it has a gap in the market. This company produces fashion magazines such as heat and more!, which are aimed at the younger audience. This then relates with my audience as the music magazine I am going to produce, is aimed at teenagers. After researching the Internet I have understood that there isn't really that many magazines that are aimed at this target group, which is another reason why I have decided to choose this genre and aim my magazine at this particular audience.
I have decided not to choose the other two companies I researched because they didn't really have an appeal to the genre of magazine I am producing. The publishing company IPC produces typical rock genres of magazines such as NME. The other company I researched, Conde Nast was aimed at much older high class target audience. This meant it had no relevance to me in producing a pop music magazine. When I researched the company Conde Nast I also found out that they didn't produce any music magazines so this company doesn't relate to what I am focusing on.
Ideology- The ideology of a music magazine gives a meaning, whether this be a stereotypical point of view or moral values. This message can be given through the meaning of a picture. Again
Audience- The audience of my contents page is the same as the audience I discussed about in my interpretation of my front cover. This isn't going to change as I am going to aim it at the same audience.
Representation- The representation of my contents page is again the same as my representation on the front cover of my magazine.

Research of magazines and publishing companies for my institution

These images are taken from the Internet of front covers of two different magazines. These magazines target different people who are interested in different genres of music. The publisher of each of these magazines are different. NME is produced by IPC where as Kerrang is produced by the publisher Bauer. The publishing company I am going to use for my magazine is going to be Bauer. Eventhough, Bauer don't publish magazines for the pop music genre, I believe the magazine I produce could fit in this gap in the market and could be something what Bauer should produce to increase and give a different variety of magazines they produce.
As there isn't really any type of pop music magazines around at the moment I believe that my magazine could target teenagers in the age range of 15-20 year old.

LIIAR interpretation of the brief front cover

In this post I am going to talk about the brief through LIIAR. LIIAR stands for Language, Institution, Ideology, Audience and Representation and these features should be included in my music magazine. I will first discuss about the LIIAR interpretation on the front cover and then talk about the contents and the double page spread.
Language-One example of language that should be contained on the front cover of the magazine is the masthead. The masthead is one of the most important features of a magazine because its should stand out clearly. It should have relevance to the magazine and not any random name as this wouldn't be professional. Another example of media language is a main feature, this should be catchy and would relate to the article I am going to produce within my magazine. This headline should be a phrase that may summarises the main point of the main feature. These should be bold also. I should also include a main image and several other images. This is good to include because when customers take a glimpse of magazines in a shop they will look at the main image. This could result in the customer buying the magazine or not. These images could be took from various angle points. The shots could also be a long shot, medium close up shot and close up shot. I believe a medium close up shot would be better but after research this might be different. I should include a consistent colour scheme and a consistent house style. It should also include a price, date, issue number, bar code, smaller features and maybe subtitles.
Institution-After researching different types of publishing companies such as Bauer IPC and Conde Nast. I have decided to choose my publishing company as Bauer. I believe by using this publishing company, it shows that it's the best one as it has a gap in the market. As the publishing company produces fashion magazines such as heat and more! for the younger audience. The music magazine I will produce will be aimed at this target audience as there is nothing produced in this section of the market. I have decided not to choose the other two companies I researched because they didn't really have an appeal to the genre of magazine I am producing. The publishing company IPC produced typical rock genres of magazines such as NME. The other company I researched Conde Nast was aimed at much older high class target audience and not the young middle class audience. They also didn't produce any music magazines so this company didn't really appeal to me.
Ideology-  The ideology of a music magazine gives a meaning, whether this be a stereotypical point of view or moral values. This message can be given through the meaning of a picture. At the moment I am unsure of the ideology of my magazine as I haven't produced it yet, but once done I will produce a post on the ideology of it.
Audience-My target audience for my magazine is the younger generation and my genre of music I am going to be focusing on is pop music. This therefore means my magazine will be of pop music genre. My aim of my magazine is to portray an image that I have included all of the latest bands. This will be typically aimed at teenagers, who listen, buy and download the current music around at the moment.
Representation-The representation of my magazine will be shed in a positive way this will be reflected through the image on the front cover of my magazine. Again I am not 100% sure of my representation of my magazine so I will post it later.

Brief of main task

For my main task I have to create a music magazine aimed for a particular group of people. The magazine will be a particular genre including features of what that genre should include. I must produce the front page, contents and a double page spread of a feature what will be included within the magazine. All of the images and text used must be original and produced by myself. I must use a minimum of four images.