Target audience

I am yet to decide my target audience for my music magazine, but I do know that it will either be fans of Indie/alternative rock music, heavy rock music, or rap.

Indie/alternative rock
The main age for Indie/alternative rock fans is 16-25 and it is usually people who are studying for school, college or uni, but they still like to socialize. It has large following from both men and women but is mostly followed by men, so if I do decide to do this I should be aiming for males age about 17 as that fits in with the age range. Bands such as Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys are well known Indie bands so if I use this genre for my magazine I will portray my artists in their style to appeal and pull in my target audience. NME and Q magazine are famous Indie rock bands and they have a light happy mood on their front cover with a simple colour scheme. This appeals to their target audience as it symbolizes Indie rock as upbeat and simple. I will take this approach to my music magazine if I make an Indie Rock magazine.

Heavy Rock
Fans of heavy rock are usually people who are stereotyped as emo's and live dark stuff. The age range for heavy rock magazine varies a lot from 17 to even around 40! Kerrang magazine is perhaps the most well known heavy rock magazine even though it is not fully heavy rock. If I use this I should aim to make my front cover and band dark and mysterious. I will base my solo cover stars on artists such as Marilyn Manson as he has the dark, mysterious look which is included in a heavy rock magazines. However I could also make a heavy rock magazine and portray it a bit like NME's front cover as Kerrang do use this. By doing this it helps pulls in more of their target audience as not many people are into the dark, 'emo' look about them. If I do choose this genre I will research deeply into heavy rock magazine's as I don't know much about it, and it will help me create one which fits to the genre.

Rap
Rap has a huge fan base and quite a lot of people like it as the catchy tune easily gets stuck into their head. However the target audience for rap is mostly teenagers between 13-19 but it can go on to adults as well. Most people like it as the lyrics are mostly about success which most people try and do. If I choose this as my genre my magazine will be aimed at teenagers and the layout will be quite simple. There are not many rap music magazines around but a famous one is Vibe. Vibe's layout sticks to which artist they have for example if they have Eminem it is a light simple layout to make him the main focal point of the magazine as he is such as huge star. However with other artists like Drake it is dark to represent the seriousness of the magazine. This is an effective way to pull in their target audience as each cover differs to represent the artist, and I will need decide how I want my artists to be portrayed first before picking which layout to choose best suited to my target audience.

This blog will help me in the future because it has given me a clear indication of the target age group for each genre. This gives me a head start in my research and I can quickly begin to research ways I can attract my target audience by portraying my cover stars in certain ways as well as the appropriate pugs and screamers to use.