- The assistant conducted interviews with 15 people and a group to gather feedback on music magazine preferences and ideas for a new magazine. - Respondents said they don't often buy magazines because they are too expensive and they feel magazines require belonging to a certain music social group. They preferred artist-focused or event-focused magazines over genre-specific ones. - Opinions were mixed on the proposed magazine name "TONE," with some liking the musical reference but others finding it boring. Interviewees thought there was an opportunity for a new, cheaper music magazine. - Price was a major concern throughout, with most willing to pay only £2-3. Free gifts were seen as effective for driving sales. One respondent

1. Audience Research Questionnaire + Interviews

3. The attachment

5. Q. 10 Q. 11 Q. 12 Q. 13 2 No 13 Yes No. People Professional Font? 0 10 4 9 4 8 5 7 1 6 1 5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 1 0 0 No. People Rating /10 1 VIBE 5 REVERB 1 MUSO 5 TONE 3 JAM No. People Title 6 Q 2 Uncut – Springsteen 7 Mojo No. People Preferred Cover

6. Graphs

8. Interview In order to get some more insight into my audience I decided to conduct further interviews. Unlike the first one, this time I did a group interview which was also less formal. I asked a series of questions and opened them up for discussion. These are the conclusion I drew from the interviews. It was surprising to find that so few people actually buy music magazines. When I asked why they said that they were too expensive. Another big off put was the fact that some people feel as if they don’t have enough confidence in music to read about it as if you have to belong in a certain social group to read them. Others just said there weren’t enough genre specific magazines. Continuing on from the point of genre I asked about what sort of theme they would like to read about. Most said that rather than genre specific they liked the idea of having artist based magazines, or maybe even event based magazines. After some initial generalised music magazine questions I asked what they thought of one of the name ideas I had for my own magazine, ‘TONE’. There were some quite mixed views. Some said that they like it as it had a ring to it and they liked the fact that it was a musical word, whereas others weren’t convinced and thought it was slightly boring. As with starting any new product you need to have some confidence that there is a gap in the market for your product. When I asked whether they thought that a new music magazine was a good idea the decision was unanimous. All of them said yes and some suggested that maybe make a thinner, cheaper option. Price was a big issue throughout the interview, most saying that they would be willing to pay no more than £2-3. Magazine companies are always trying to find ways to entice customers to buy their magazines and from my research I have found that giving away free stuff, particularly CD’s and posters, is an effected was of doing this. At the end of the interview I asked people to give separate quotes, this is what one of them had to say: ‘’ When music magazines use fewer colours and are subtle you feel as if you’re not being patronised and it feels more convincing as a media product as apposed to a poster than a lower school student made. Not a fan of special editions as I feel that they alienate me if I am not interested in a particular person, unless it’s someone that you think is a timeless icon, such as Beatles and Nirvana e.g Not Kasabian.’’ – Miss O’Reily