Presentation of the results I got from my college research project on the impact of the Internet on music magazines.

1. Researching: What is the impact of the internet on the music magazine industry? Samantha Perry

2. Introduction As this is something I’m thinking of pursuing in the future as the basis of a career choice, I thought I would research the impact that the Internet has had on the music magazine industry. This study is important in the sense that music magazines need to know how to keep up with the digital age so they can continue to appeal to their target audience. To find out what people think the impact of the Internet has had on music magazines, I needed to break the subject down into different parts and investigate each of them in different research methods.

3. Research methods The reason I used more than one method of research is to back up the facts I found out. This makes my research more reliable and legitimate, because I’ve found it out using different ways. Personally, I think that qualitative research is most important to this research study because it’s the consumer’s opinion that matters most. They are the ones who the music magazines cater for, so their needs are the ones that have to be met.

4. Demographics To understand the data I received from my questionnaire I included a few questions in relation to the demographics of the people taking the questionnaire.

5. Do people prefer print or online magazines? From my in depth interviews I found out that both of the people I interviewed preferred print magazines to online magazines as they could have and hold a physical copy of their chosen one, as well as keeping it for future reading. They liked the physical portability of the print magazines as it meant they could read it for leisure wherever they wanted to, instead of having to sit at a desk in a computer room or straining their eyes to read it on a phone screen. This corresponds with the results of my focus group as they mentioned the same things, preferring print magazines for the whole experience of reading a magazine, turning the pages and being able to keep the posters and put them up somewhere without needing to print them out themselves.

6. One secondary research source said this, talking about online magazines: 2 “ [It] Costs nothing to start upYou can publish all by yourselfDistribution costs are virtually non-existent” I didn’t find out much about what people thought about print magazines in my secondary research apart from the fact it was “dying” as mentioned in one article on The Times Online. In this article the author also talked about music magazines like ‘Q’ and ‘NME’, mentioning that ‘Q’ is taking a big risk in “abandoning the tried-and-tested music magazine format”3, though other secondary sources as well as primary sources think that the transition to becoming more digital is a good risk for music magazines to take.

7. What is the use of online counterparts of magazines? Music magazines use the Internet to extend their brand further than just print magazines by creating their own website and pages on existing popular websites. This gives the readers quick and easy access to find exclusive online content and to give feedback about the magazine. Their own websites are the main online counterparts of the magazines as that is where most of the information is, including things such as news, radio, features, new music, reviews, photos, videos, blogs, competitions and even online merchandise/ticket shops. The magazines will often refer to their website in some articles in order to get people to go onto it, as people will often get sidetracked by other things they see on the website and they’ll spend a longer time on it. The online versions of music magazines are often found on their official websites, so it is easy for the readers to find them and read them. As I mentioned, there are other places to find a magazine’s Internet content such as on social networking sites such as Facebook, where companies and brands are able to create pages to show pictures ad video that people can comment on, and to communicate with their audiences.

8. I also didn’t find much about online counterparts of magazines in my secondary research apart from one small article that mentions what users would consider paying for online or not paying for online. 4 Many people from the Nielsen survey wouldconsider paying for print magazines, which is the same as what the people from my own survey would do. Similarly, the Nielsen survey states that people wouldn’t so much want to pay for an Internet only news sources, and the people who took my questionnaire would pay a lot less, if anything, for online magazines, which are similar.

9. What are the advantages and disadvantages ofprint music magazines? These were the recurring advantages and disadvantages that kept coming up in both the secondary research I collected and my own primary research, so this makes me think they are things that are very important to the readers.

10. What are the advantages and disadvantages of online music magazines? Like the previous slide, there wasn’t much information I found out about the advantages and disadvantages of online music magazines. The main one, however, was the interactivity and the fact anybody can set one up without much money.

11. Which gives the audience a better deal? I think the audience gets a better deal from an online magazine, as it offers quite a lot more than a print magazine does. It’s possible to actually watch videos and listen to music through online magazines, so while there could be an article reviewing a concert or a music video in a print music magazine, the same article could be in an online magazine accompanied by a video of the concert or music video. The same can be said if the magazine was creating a playlist of tracks to listen to that month, or talking about new songs, as an online magazine could let the readers listen to them while reading about them. My research backs up the points I’ve mentioned, though both of the two people I interviewed said that they preferred print music magazines to online ones because of the fact they are physical copies and portable. This could be argued with the fact online magazines are easy to print out and assemble into a copy of a print magazine, but that takes away the interactivity of an online magazine being ‘online’.

12. As for whether print music magazines or online counterparts give the audience a better deal, I’ve concluded that online counterparts do so. They are what the audience prefer, as my pie chart shows that 8% more people spend time on them than people spend time reading print music magazines.

13. Will print music magazines or online music magazines be more successful in the future? 70% of the people who took my questionnaire think that online magazines will be more successful in the future, which matches the results of the final question of both of the in depth interviews I did, as both people said that online magazines will eventually be the most successful. The first interviewee told me that although she thought it would mainly be the younger generations that would prefer online magazines, they would still become the most popular as everything is going digital now.

14. Research Method Evaluation I think the most successful of my research methods was my focus group, as although there weren’t many people in it, the volunteers that were in it were very focused on my topic, and they managed to give honest answers even if they hadn’t read an online or print magazine. The worst research method were my in depth interviews. Although they gave a lot of qualitative information, I don’t think I had enough questions or the right questions for the answers I particularly wanted. If I were to research another topic, or improve this one, using the same method, I would make sure I knew exactly what questions I wanted to ask and I would ask more questions leading off of what my interviewees told me. The questionnaire I created was quite successful, and I was happy with the outcome and the data I had been able to put into graphs. I could have asked a few more relevant questions that I didn’t think of until I was compiling the results, such as “How often do you read online magazines”, as I asked a similar question about print magazines.

15. Statistics and Conclusion I discovered that half of the people that took my questionnaire had never read a print music magazine, over half have visited the website of a music magazine and 65% had in fact read an online magazine. This goes to prove that with the digital age growing, more people have read a magazine online than gone out to buy a print music magazine. Most people would expect online content (including online magazines) to be under £1 in price, as opposed to a (slightly) smaller number of people willing to pay £2-4 for a physical copy of a music magazine. 70% of my questionnaire takers think that online music magazines will be more popular in the future than print magazines, which corresponds to my previous findings that more people had read an online magazine than a print version. My questionnaire findings suggest that to stay on top of their industry, music magazines need to be fully acquainted with digital technology, offer fairly cheap exclusive online content and maybe a fairly cheap online version of their magazine.

16. References 1http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/152175/How-did-you-attract/address-your-audience%3F 2http://ezinearticles.com/?Differences-Between-Online-Media-and-Print-Media&id=4088233 3http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article4828048.ece 4 http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/paid-content-stats/