Magazine Market Research

NMEMarket Research.

The NME certificate says that the magazine price is £2.40, which isn’t too expensive and also reflects the target market in terms of ageand class. The general age of the audience for NME is teenage to middle age with an average age of 24, who would generally find thisprice affordable.It is aimed at an average of a middle class market, most working at least part time if not full time.69% of readers are male, while only 31% are female.

Out of the 100% of issues that were created, the active purchased circulation was 99.8% within the half a year time period, on average20,011 per issue of these were printed and 821 per issue of these were digital or online. The graph at the bottom shows that single copysales at newsstands accounted for nearly 14,000 issues, single copy subscription sales accounted for just over 6,000, and multiple copysubscription sales for only 30 issues. This shows that nearly three quarters of readers buy the issue from a newsstand or shop, a singleissue when they want and a very low percentage (only 30 people) actually subscribe for multiple copies.The certificate also shows that in the time period of half a year, 26 issues were circulated with average circulation per issue of 356 in theUK and ROI and 465 in other countries.

QMarket Research.

Q magazine’s readership shows that 70% of people who do read it, are in the ABC1 category which shows they are middle class, to uppermiddle class generally. The ratio of women to men is 31.7% female and 68.3% male with the most common age of the reader being 15-24 with 35.5%. This shows that the magazine pitches itself at majority teenage to young adult men but also targets women to a certainextent too. The next common age group is 25-34 year olds, with 26.3% of readership and the age group with the lowest readership isthat of 65+ with only 1.4% showing that the magazine probably do not aim to cater for this age group. These statistics look at the timeperiod between January 2012 and December 2012.The bit of information at the bottom of the page shows that the circulation from January 2013 to June 2013 is 58,980 yet the readershipfrom January to December 2012 was 377,000. A reason for this could be that the magazine has sent out free copies to certaincompanies or people to promote themselves or maybe they have sold one copy to a library for example and lots of people have read itthere, so readership would be higher.

The box at the top of the page detailsother ways that people interact with themagazine, for example 15,886 emailsubscriptions, 32,556 Facebook fans and69,549 twitter followers. This shows thatQ magazine have tried to reach a wideraudience and made their issues andcontent more accessible to the newergeneration and given readers a chance toget involved, by giving their own viewsand ideas as well as making them feel asif maybe they are getting exclusiveinformation before anyone else this way.

Rolling StoneMarket Research.

The readership profile of Rolling Stone magazine shows that 7,365 men read it

and only 5,046 women, which as a percentage is 59.3% of men and 40.7%

of women reading the magazine, showing it is maybe more male orientated however not to the

extent that women don’t read it. The most common age of readership is 18

to 24 years old, or 27.6% but also 25 to 34 year olds with 24.5%, whereas the

audience gets less as they get older with only 11.9% of over 55’s reading

the magazine, showing that it the makers probably haven't targeted this age group but on the other hand they

still haven’t ruled them out and it is still quite a high statistic.

The circulation of Rolling Stone is 1,447 but above this the profile says that 8.51 people read each copy sold. This would

mean that just over 12,000 people have actually read each issue, on average.

The issue with comparing Rolling Stone magazine to the likes of NME or Q, is that this magazine is an American one. This means that it is not sold all over the world except in specialist ones, so it is not at readily available and therefore the readership is likely to be lower.

However magazines such as Q and Mojo which are published widely, take some inspiration from this original magazine and are similar.

Common Trend?

My chosen Publisher

There are a few aspects that all of these magazines havein common. One of these is, that the most oftenreadership is males, around late teenage to young adultsand all three have the most common market of the ABC1category which shows that they are mainly working classto upper middle class. This also means that the magazinecan price themselves not too high but maybe moreexpensively than a magazine aimed at children or onetargeting a lower class population. I will consider thesefactors when I look at where I will pitch my magazine.

I have decided that the company I will choose topublish my magazine is Bauer. This is because theyhave published other magazines within the samecategory and genre as mine will be so they areobviously skilled at what they do which I think will getmy magazine the exposure it needs, as well as the factthat they have the highest readership, going on thefigures that I have found when researching into this.