ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEY AND THE RESULTS

Question 1: What is your age?From the results I can see that the majority of people are under the age of 18. Out of the 31 people, 5 of them are aged between 18-24. The answers to this survey are biased as most of the participants were from my media class which in majority is aged between 16 and 18. I did however, also post my survey on my social media and even then only one person answered 35-44 and only one person was aged 45-54. I think that this shows how the majority of people using social media are teenagers and young adults which made me realise that if the music magazines were to have their own website/be published or purchased online, they would have a limited audience (in terms of age).

Putting these facts aside, 77.24% of the participants are under 18 which tells me that if I were to pick under18 as my target audience I would include topics/articlesthat they could relate with for example- festivals with elements of fashion, or new technology based tips such as easier ways to access music through apps and/or websites. In addition, younger audiences would Allow me to include informal language as well being Creative with the colour scheme and layout of pages.

Question 2: What is your gender?From the pie chart of results for ‘What is your gender?’ shows that the majority of the test takers are females. Similarly to the age question, this is a biased result since most of the survey takers are from my A level Media class which contains mostly of females. This will be considered when creating my magazine. However, at least a quarter (25.81%) of the takers were males which adds variety and diversity within the results.

However, I did also post the survey on my social media on which I have a fairly equal amount of males and females. Therefore, the results show me that females are more willing to participate in surveys. As a result, I believe if I included interactive options such as questionnaires or contests in the magazine, females would be more willing to be included.

This does not mean that I will create my musicmagazine entirely based on these results because I donot want to instantly limit my target audience to females only.

Question 3: Out of these, which music genre interests you the most?The most popular genre within my survey is rock receiving 11 votes (35.48%) followed by Indie which received 10 votes (32.26%). The other two genres that I have included as options on my survey are Alternative and Rap, which had 5 votes each. The difference between the people that chose Indie and Rock is very small, and the same amount of people picked both Alternative and Rap which brings me to the conclusion that I should consider a mixed genre magazine. More specifically an Indie Rock magazine with elements of Alternative and Rap.

I did not include the option for ‘other’ or even different genres of music to pick from, this is due to the fact that I have limited knowledge of the different genres. Choosing four that I am familiar with, gives me the opportunity to add more content and reviews as I am aware of the newestfestivals/artists/music etc. in Indie, Rock, Alternative andRap genres. Although I limited the options, I structured the question to ask ‘Out of these’ which I believe did notforce opinions onto the participants, and allowed themto freely chose.

Question 4: What is the first thing you notice when looking at a music magazine?The analysis shows that the most noticeable feature on the magazines is the main image, over half people (60%) have chosen this. I believe this is mostly due to the fact that it’s the biggest item on the page and usually includes bands/artists so people look to see if they’re interested in that artist. The two least picked options are ‘Freebies’ and ‘Articles advised’. From this I can deduct that (presumably) people buy the magazines for the content about the specific band/artist advertised in the main image or simply because they like the brand of the magazine.

The answers also show me that when creating my music magazine I need to put time and thought into the main image as the audience will notice that first and I want their first impression of my magazine to be positive.

One person has skipped this question, this tells me thatthe question was either too general or too specific. Thismeans that when I do the interviews I should considerincluding a question similar on the topic of the mostnoticeable features on a magazine cover.

Question 5: What colour scheme would you most likely to see on a magazine?Out of the three options provided: Vibrant, Pastel and Neutral, 54.84% of the survey takers chose Vibrant. Only three participants chose pastel. When creating this survey, I thought that the question was not specific enough and therefore included a comment box asking to specify the colours. Only 10 out of 31 people responded which is not a reasonable amount to make judgement. The positive thing is that the people who did comment, stated more than one colour.

Once again, I think this question should be elaborated during interviews as even when the colours were stated, some people saw , for example, red as a neutral colour and others saw it as vibrant.

I also think that my wording of the options was poor. What I meant by ‘Neutral’ is colours such as black and white, but during the comments section I could see thatsome of the participants were confused and therefore I think I should elaborate the subject of colour schemes in my interview.

Question 5: What colour scheme would you most likely to see on a magazine?I allowed a response/comment section as I thought that the question was too brief and would not give me enough detail. I was lucky enough that participants mostly stated more than one colour. After adding up the colours that were said and viewing the respondent’s answer to check which out of the three- Neutral, Vibrant and Pastel they chose during the survey, here are the results I collected:Red- 6 (5 Vibrant, 1 Neutral)Black- 4 (3 Vibrant, 1 Neutral) Yellow- 3 (1 Neutral, 1 Vibrant, 1 Pastel)White- 3 (2 Vibrant, 1 Neutral)Blue- 2 (1 Vibrant, 1 Pastel)Orange- 2 (1 Vibrant, 1 Pastel)Brown- 1 (Neutral)Green- 1 (Neutral)Nude- 1 (Neural)Pink- 1 (Pastel)Purple- 1 (Vibrant)

One participant stated that they prefer Black and White sinceit’s professional meaning that they would prefer a more formal type of magazine.

As viewed in the comments on the right, red is the most requested colour for a magazine.

Question 6: What content would you like to be included in the magazines?From the results I can see that interviews are the most viewed content in a magazine since 13/31 people chose it (41.94%). This shows me that people are interested in the personal life of bands/artists or people that are in the music industry and what they have to say about different situations and scenarios. The three least picked answers are gossip, posters as well as reviews of events which all had 1 person pick them. I think that age links into why gossip and posters were not a popular pick as they seem childish.

Looking at the two other options that were taken into account- upcoming events (received 7 votes) and music chart (receiving 8 votes), I can see that people are interested in the things that involve music instead of the additional freebies (posters) or information that may not be true and makes theartists or band look bad (gossip).

Question 7: What is the main reason you buy music magazines?When looking at the pie chart, I can see that there is one answer that received the most votes which is ‘for the entertainment’. This tells me that people are looking to read it during their leisure time and therefore I can imagine the textual information being informal and easy to follow. As well as this, if they’re reading for entertainment the content should be more light hearted for example, funny stories or exciting news such as CD releases etc. instead of heavy, upsetting stories or information.

The options ‘to relax’ (19.35%) and ‘to keep informed’ (22.58%) were close together which means that I should also consider them when planning the layout and content of my magazine. The feature to fit the purpose if relaxing could include suggestions of music that the audience could then go and search. To satisfy the audience withkeeping them informed, I’m considering including upcoming releases or tours.

The option that received the least (3) votes is ‘for thefreebies’ which tells me that people who do purchasea music magazine do it with a purpose of wanting tofind out about music and artists instead of receivingrandom gifts.

Question 8: How often would you purchase a music magazine?The answers to this question surprised me. I expected there to be a high percentage in answers for ‘monthly’ as well as ‘weekly’ when in fact ‘yearly’ was the highest answer- with 12 votes (38.71%). This suggests that people are not hugely interested in purchasing music magazines. Due to the unexpected results, I did not include a question asking ‘Do you purchase music magazines?’ or something similar. As a result, I am planning on asking a question that expands on what could be involved in the magazine to attract more people to buying them.

Not a single person has picked ‘Daily’. This is a sensible choice since I think it is unrealistic that anyone would purchase a music magazine each day.

In addition, the 4 people that chose ‘Other, pleasespecify’ did not specify which leaves me confused as toIf they do not purchase them at all or purchase them for example every two weeks.

Question 9: Out of these, who would you like to see on a magazine front cover?I made this question very specific as most of the artists that I included as options are from the same/similar genre and therefore have a similar sound. I did try to include one of each from the four genre’s I asked a question about previously- Rock, Indie, Alternative and Rap. Alike the genre question, the results were close together (minus the Vaccines) with a tie of 9 votes between Arctic Monkeys and Drake. They were closely followed by Catfish and the Bottlemen with 7 votes and Red Hot Chili Peppers with 5 votes. Only one of the people chose The Vaccines.

I think that these results do not tell me much about the potential audience of my music magazine because here the artists were picked in terms of preference. What I can deduct is that all of the artists named (apart from the Vaccines)are known by the participants due to the amounts ofvotes for each so I know that the modern, mostly IndieRock music will appeal to them.

Question 10: On a scale of 0 (busy) to 100 (organised), how would you like the music magazine?This question is the only one that did not include multiple choice answers and instead had a slider where the participant could slide the ball from 1 to 100 to show how organised/busy they prefer music magazines. This then calculated an average that ended up being 73 meaning that on average people prefer organised magazines.

When breaking down and looking at the individual results, I can see that none of the participants picked 0 (busy,) 4 picked 50 (equal amounts of busy and organised) and 2 people prefer organised magazines because they picked 100. The other 25 participants picked numbers between 50-100 which means that no one wants a magazine that is busy or even slightly busier than organised.