Questionnaire Analysis

MY AUDIENCE

55% of the people I asked to fill in my questionnaire were male, I wanted to ask slightly more men than women, as the male gender are the main audience for alternative rock magazines. Therefore, by asking more men than women, I would get a better idea of expectations and wants for my demographic. Although I asked more men, I did not make the difference between the amount of men and women too much of a difference (only 5%) so that I could target my magazine to both genders as much as possible, to make it slightly different to the stereotypes. As well as this, I also asked more people within the age bracket that I was targeting (15-23). This isn’t uncommon for alternative music magazines, and this age bracket usually forms most alternative music audiences.

To look further into the minds of my target audience of male 15-23 year olds, I asked all of the people who took part to tell me their favourite bands/artists; most of the answers were either Pop punk bands or indie bands, this shocked me as people around this age bracket are usually more interested in mainstream music such as grime or pop, and therefore helped me to get to know my audience more.

When I asked if my audience were employed or not, most of them replied ‘yes’. This shows that unlike the younger end of my audience they have decided to not only study, but work alongside. This suggests that they have some sort of income, which could mean they are would not mind paying more than average for a magazine, but also being students mostly, they may not.

From a small amount of questions, I have got a clearer idea of what my magazine will include and a way to incorporate smaller indie and pop punk bands, so that it will appeal to the majority of my target demographic. The masculinity of the music genres, will help me to give the magazine a more mescaline vibe as well as keeping it within the genre and appealing to both genders as most music fans will like to see their favourite bands on any platform, whereas most men are more attracted to more masculine objects.

MUSIC

One of the questions I asked my focus group was how they would define ‘Alternative’ music. They answered with band names and a mix of genres from soft rock to heavy metal. This shows how the alternative music genre cannot be defined as it has such a mass variety of different interpretations. Rather than one specific type of music, it merges the edges between many genres. This reflects not only how different the genre can be, but also how unique it can be, as well as its fans and audience. To represent this in my magazine, the content and artists will be diverse and varied to target as many people form the alternative genre as possible.

I asked people what gender they found to be more dominant on the cover of alternative rock magazines, the majority of the answers were ‘Male’. Although people of the female gender would be happy to see a woman on the cover, there are fewer women in the genre of music all together. This is due to the genre being stereotyped as very masculine and some subgenres being heavy rock, and involving ‘screaming’, which is harder for women to achieve the same effect of a low pitch voice. The covers I looked at that had women on the cover, were far more cluttered or also had a male accompanying them – as if to distract the audience away from the woman on the page. This supports the idea of the alternative genre being more male dominated, as it is more common to see a minimalistic cover with only a male front man present than it is a woman. This will be echoed in my magazine, as there must be a greater male than female presence on the cover as well as inside.

MAGAZINE IDEAS

I asked my audience how often they buy magazines. This was to make sure I wasn’t going to create too much content or not enough. The responses showed that most my demographic read magazines either every month, or rarely ever. This coincides with the cost of the magazine, as the responses were favoured towards a middle of the range cost magazine, which could suggest that some people will not buy a magazine if they feel it is too expensive. This shows their age, and lack of money due to being mostly students, and that even if they are employed there are less likely to buy a magazine if it is in the higher price range. Therefore, due to my audience, I will be making sure the price of my magazine is thought about considerably to make sure that it is well priced and affordable for my target audience. Not only this I will make sure that my magazine includes exclusive content, to ensure it is worth picking up and buying, over online versions or social media. Due to the proliferation of social media and the constant updates of mobiles and the internet, online publications are becoming more common, and therefore making it easier to access magazines online.

I wanted to make sure my magazine appealed to both genders, so I created a question about the colour scheme of my magazine. This question included different variations of colour, all including neutral colours such as grey and black(greyscale). Out of the colour schemes, the two most popular included pink. This was interesting to me, as usually pink is seen as a more feminine colour, yet most of the people I asked to be included in the questionnaire were male. As I feel the pink colours would appeal to more females than males, I will counteract the feminine colour scheme with someone of the male gender as the main image, to appeal to both men and women. As well as using a male to counteract any femininity, my research also shows that men are more prominent in the alternative music genre.

Another question I asked was what writing style my audience preferred. From magazines I had already read within this genre, I knew that some of them preferred to write in a more informal style. It was confirmed by my audience that this was popular, as it makes the audience feel more involved and makes the article more personal. I also think that the informal writing style reflects the genre as it is seen to be more of a community. The alternative genre is commonly referred to as a community, so I would like to continue and reflect this within my magazine.

The last topic I addressed was the cover of the magazine. I asked whether people are more likely to buy a magazine based on its cover or not. The majority answered ‘yes’. This tells me that my audience are more interested in the main content, rather than smaller content and that usually and artist will attract the audience to buy it. As well as this, I asked whether the cover would attract the audience more if it was busy and cluttered (like KERRANG!) or minimalistic (like AP), I had speculations that as I was targeting the older side of my audience, the minimalistic approach would make them feel more adult and less like they were reading a childish magazine; I was right. There was more interest in a minimalistic design for the magazine. Due to this research, I will make sure that make the cover and interesting as possible, but also minimalistic to reflect my audience.