1. 5. How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract an audience to anything, you need to include things that they will love or be very fond of.
In my answer to this question, I shall be discussing what I have included in my magazine, the uses
and gratifications theory, new media and pretty much everything which could make this magazine
appealing to the audience.
Features:
My first feature that the audience of my magazine will like is up and coming section. As already
mentioned, Indie/Alternative is a genre in which a lot of new bands and artists break through into
the mainstream world of music. Fans of the Indie/Alternative genre will be able to read through
these pages and will see the names of artists who are set to take the genre by storm. For a genre as
good as Indie/Alternative, new bands and songs are vital to keeping it alive. Indie fans will be
extremely grateful that they have been informed of these new artists and will be even more eager to
listen to their songs.
The next feature is the price of the magazine. Priced at a very reasonable £1.50 – the magazine can
easily be purchased by the readers. For £1.50 they can enjoy the latest news from around the
Indie/Alternative world, whilst being able to read entertaining and informative articles based on
some of the biggest names in the Indie/Alternative genre. This helps support the uses and
gratifications theory of educating, because the readers can gain a real knowledge and amount of
information from reading the magazines. The price of the magazine actually makes the magazine
attractive to the buyer because they know that it is an affordable item – meaning that they will find
it harder to miss an issue than buy one.
Another feature that my target audience will like is my gig guide. At the bottom of the contents
page, there is a small section in which dates and venues for future gigs and other music events are
listed. The fact that this is on the contents page makes it extremely effective because it means that
whilst looking for other things to entertain them, the readers will come across this guide. They can
be educated which supports the uses and gratifications theory once again. Hopefully, a reader will
decide to inform their friends or family about an event via word of mouth or social media. This
means that there will be social interaction between other fans of the Indie/Alternative genre, the
magazine and the bands involved – which is another factor of the uses and gratifications theory.
The uses and gratifications theory of social interaction is further supported by my use of new media
within my magazine. I have created two social media accounts. One was on Instagram and the other
on Twitter. The Instagram account was based on my featured article band “RoodePelikaan”. The
account gives a background insight to the band itself to that the fans and readers can feel that little
bit closer to the band. In addition, this means that different fans can discuss certain topics or debate
about particular things, meaning that the whole use of this new and social media has been a great
success when looking at the uses and gratifications theory. The same can be said for the Twitter
page that the magazine uses. Readers get up to date information from the magazine faster than

2. anywhere else. There are weekly competitions, debates and news posted on the account on a daily
basis. Competitions such as “Write down the best verse in the space of one tweet to win a trip to
RoodePelikaan’s recording studios” will get the audience more involved with the magazine itself.
Anyone of Twitter has the option to retweet and hashtag certain things. If a high amount of people
hashtag a certain person or subject, then that starts to trend, meaning that the popularity has
increased. So if a lot of readers were to post “Just read the greatest article on RHCP #Indievidual”
then the magazine would start to trend, meaning more and more people would hear about it. With
retweets, people can show that they agree with something someone says. By retweeting, the
original tweet is posted on that person’s page and tags the original tweeter. Everyone who follows
the person that retweeted can see that tweet and has the option to retweet it as well. If this cycle
continues for a large amount of time or has a large amount of people doing it, then the magazine
will become well known via that as well.