The document describes a music magazine called VENUS that is aimed at representing the social group of 16-25 year old British females with an interest in hip-hop/R&B/rap music. The creator saw a gap in the market for a hip-hop magazine targeted towards females, as well as a gap for a British hip-hop magazine. A survey showed that the target audience felt female hip-hop artists did not get enough recognition and that there should be a magazine focused on British hip-hop. The magazine aims to represent its target reader - a 17 year old urban London girl of African ethnicity interested in both male and female British and American hip-hop, street dance, and fashion.

1. Evaluation Question 4
How does your media product
represent particular social groups?

2. My music magazine, VENUS, is aimed towards a
target audience of 16-25 year old British females
with an interest in Hip-Hop/R&B/Rap music.

3. I decided on this target audience because I saw
from my research that there was a gap in the
market for a Hip-Hop magazine aimed towards
females. There was also a gap in the market for
a British Hip-Hop magazine, as there were only
American Hip-Hop magazines available on the
market, such as Vibe and XXL.

4. To make sure that if I created a
magazine aimed towards females
that also featured British Hip-Hop
artists, I made a survey that my
target audience would answer.
56% said that female Hip-Hop
artists don’t get enough
recognition, and 80% said there
should be a music magazine
based on British Hip-Hop.

5. I imagine the typical reader for my
magazine to be a 17 year old girl
from urban London, from a African
ethnicity. She would enjoy listening
to both male and female Hip-Hop
artists, British and American. She
would also enjoy street dance, as
this is a way Hip-Hop music can be
performed, and she would also have
an interest in fashion.

7. Even though I just stated the typical reader for
my magazine, any ethnicity of people can read
my magazine, and all over the world, as
international artists such as the ones pictured
will be included in my magazine.

8. This would appeal to girls who maybe ‘fancy’ this male artist and
wouldn’t be able to afford a trip to LA to meet him. Although this a
convention not commonly used in Hip-Hop magazines, because my
audience is so young they may need something else other than
content to persuade them to buy the magazine.
Featured stories would also make fans of
particular artists buy the magazine because they
want the newest information about their favourite
artists.
This would appeal to the social group of
people who are solely dedicated to
finding new music and want to find out
information on the new albums etc.
The featured artists would
appeal to die hard fans of
certain artists, because they’re
such big fans they’ll
buy a magazine just because
their favourite artist
is mentioned inside, because
they aspire to be like them.
The artist on the cover of my magazine is
wearing fashionable, expensive looking
clothes. This would appeal to a social group
who have a big interest in fashion and may
want to find more fashion influences and
emulate the stars in the magazines looks.
The readers of my magazine will
want to discover the newest
artists to add to their extensive music
libraries, my magazine allows them to
do this with countdowns like this.
At £3.99, my magazine isn’t
too expensive for the audience as
the magazine is issues monthly.
Because some members of the
target audience may be working
class I didn’t want them to feel
isolated if the magazine was too
expensive.

9. The social group of fans
who regularly go to gigs
and concerts of their
favourite artists are
represented as they can
read reviews about their
favourite artists tours
and decide whether or
not they would go to see
them.
Giveaways aren’t usually associated with Hip-Hop,
however with the younger female audience, an ideology
is that they aspire to be as successful as the stars that feature
in the magazine. To allow them to experience this feeling,
a giveaway would make them feel special if they one something
an artist wore in the magazine, such as this chain.
The target audience all belong to
the social group who spend a lot of time
using technology such as the internet and
their mobile phones. I thought it was
important to allow the audience to interact
with the magazine online on different social
media websites such as Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram.