Q4: Who would the audience be for your

media product?

Research and planning• In my research and planning I did for Native, I identified a potential audience. This was found out

from using a survey and my evaluation helped establish this. In the end, I identified my audience as:• - really 17 and upwards, therefore the magazine would need mature content and cover theme

• - gender neutral, as the amount of female/male ratio was only marginally different (53.85% -46.15%)

• - not completely fanatical about music- whilst they enjoyed reading the odd music magazine, they would not want a subscription every month.

• -this also could suggest that many of my readers either have other hobbies they like to spend their money on or they don’t have the money. This means Native’s readers would be different to the middle class, music passionate readers of Q.

• -an equal amount of my audience preferred to access Native through print based mediums or e-based magazines, either one would be suitable as Native readers would be comfortable and proficient in either.

An important note I found was that whilst all completed the top half of the survey, many skipped the last two questions (which were more specific), which meant overall I received a limited response. However I suspect this was due to the fact that not many from the researched actually knew about the indie music bands, and so didn’t really know what to put. Proportionally speaking, if you took this as a representative of the country’s music taste, I would think you would find a similar amount that was really into indie music. This shows me that the audience of indie music is a limited one, so Native has to be tailored so it can cater and appeal to this specific group.

Further identifying my audience: Age • Once I had established that my audience was around 18+ I found this was very

important to keep in my mind with a view to what the front cover was going to look like, what sort of content was advertised, whether it was going to be humorous, serious, loud headlines and bright colours or if I was going to follow the magazine INDIE’s lead and go minimalistic… it all depended on what would appeal to my audience.

• You can see from my front cover screenshots, that I went with a black and white theme, with a limited colour palette using the stripe shades seen on the model. This was to create some continuity throughout the magazine and to develop a theme that would continue in the further issues of Native. I believed that tailoring my magazine with a sophisticated edge would attract the older audience to buy it, as whilst it is still attention grabbing with the blues and reds, I hope it does so in a mature way with the monochrome parts.

Furthermore, I tailored Native to appeal to a younger generation by including the mention of festivals, which tends to be a main feature of a younger audience’s lives. I also made use of modern technology to allow this audience to interact further with the magazine, with digital downloads of songs available, CDs being available to win plus the mention of a Facebook page and twitter- all of these areas tend to be more apart of the younger technological generation. However, this is not to say that Native would only appeal exclusively to younger people; going to festivals and using modern technology is not only the domain of the younger generation. Whilst the majority will be younger, there will be older readers in the minority.

My audience is: gender neutral• Another key aspect I kept in my head whilst designing Native was the idea that as

‘indie’ music doesn’t really appeal to one specific gender, I had to keep my magazine appealing to both. In some senses, this was quite difficult to do, as most magazines (especially magazines such as top of the pops/XX: which are either really girly or male dominated) do lean towards one gender. Magazines such as Q are quite rare, as it has a mix and both genders are equally represented, therefore it appeals to both.

• I found also, that this leaning does depend on the genre of music. For instance, I think pop tends to have a lot of female solo artists such as Taylor swift, or boy bands (1D) which appeal to girls, so therefore the magazine has to appeal to these types. Genres such as rap are not necessarily enjoyed by one specific gender, and is enjoyed by both. But often in rap, the female: male ratio of rappers are limited, and often, even when you do get female rappers they are not considered to be real ‘rappers’ and aren’t taken seriously. That’s why in magazines such as xx which wants it image to be of a ‘real’ rap magazine, it makes no mention of these. This makes it feel male dominated.

• I found that as long as Native’s design was reasonable i.e. just what looked good, I had no problem design-wise. Plus, it very much helped that the genre of indie isn’t dominated by either gender, so even when Native talked about the bands or artists, it wasn’t talking about one specific gender.

Writing style• Here Is an example of Native’s writing style. You can see

that it isn’t geared to one gender (if the audience was young girls the tone would lack formality e.g. ‘gosh!’ and ‘wow’ in a magazine in order to relate) and that whilst it is written for an older audience, it isn’t laid out in the form of a newspaper such as the Independent or the Times, which are very formal and cover serious issues. I hope that for a music artist interview, Native’s writing style appeals as a bit of light reading for enjoyment but is not too young in style. Generally, I would say that Native follows the style conventions of magazines such as Q or Mojo, but this was to give it an air of authenticity.

• It helped relate to the readers of Native as I designed it how it would have appealed to me. This meant my audience will have been in a certain bracket of income (enough so they could spend on their hobbies of music, go to a festival…) be of a certain age, and appreciate the same things in a music magazine as I would have. Plus, the research done was conducted amongst a younger audience, so naturally Native might have been biased towards a younger audience.