The document describes research conducted to define the target audience for a new rock music magazine, including focus groups. Stereotypical profiles of rock music fans are provided, then a sample target audience profile of "Sarah" is given. A focus group is then described where the creator asked 4 rock music fans ages 14-19 questions about magazine design preferences. Responses indicated a preference for bold covers using red, black, and white featuring favorite artists, informal writing style, contents pages listing band pages, and double page spreads featuring question and answer interviews of trending bands.

1. Task 8- Target Audience Research Using Qualitative Methods such as Focus
Groups.
My music magazine is going to be towards the genre of rock music, specifically modern
rock music. The target audience will cover bother females and males, so that the
audience for my magazine is constricted. I want the magazine to be aimed at 14-19 year
olds who are interested in rock music. The audience will consist of a range of ethnicities
(minorities included).
I will continue to research more intensely into my target audience, investigating the
stereotypes of the music genre I have selected and also my particular target audience
stereotypes.
Stereotypical Audience Profile
Gender: Stereotypically males, if a woman is displayed, she is
usually portrayed with dark make up, dark clothing and
perceived as a sexual object.
Age: Typically an older audience, however it varies depending
on the sub-genre of rock. With my magazine music genre it
would typically be older teenagers such as 16-19.
Social Class: Lower class and can be seen by classes above as
dirty and a bit scruffy looking. Not upper class as they are
stereotypically more controlled, sophisticated etc.
Ethnicity: Stereotypically white, rarely any other races.
Interests: Going to festivals, drinking alcohol, and smoking, rebelling, getting tattoos.
Dress Sense: Black clothing, leather jackets, baggy t-shirts with band logos on, buckled
boots, studs, glasses, piercings, etc.
Why they listen to rock: Believes songs have a lot more meaning- completely against hip
hop music as thinks it is all about girls, drugs and money. Thinks that the music reflects his
own dark thoughts/emotions.
How often do they listen to it?: Often, as an escape from his everyday average life.
Magazine content preferences: He would read about rock bands, specifically interviews
and tour dates of his favourite bands.

2. My Profile of Typical Target Audience
General Background
Name: Sarah
Age: 16
Ethnicity: White British
Lives in Solihull, West Midlands. Currently a student,
planning to study at university after college.
Music Preferences: Enjoys most types of music apart from
hip hop and rap. Her favourite genre is rock, her favourite
band being Evanescence. She enjoys to wear band t-shirts
to express her interest in her favourite genre. She mainly
wears black hoodies, jeans and converse.
How she uses the music: Sarah attends many concerts for her favourite bands, she is very
passionate with music and also enjoys creating her own and singing. She wishes that more
of her friends enjoyed her type of music as she attends concerts with her family. She uses
itunes to download her music and converts it to her phone. This is so she can listen to it
with her headphones when she is travelling- also whilst doing work as well as relaxing.
Feelings about music magazines: She buys NME occasionally when she sees a band/artist
on their which she recognises. She doesn’t think they are very interesting, especially
seeing as the price compared to other magazines is high. She also thinks that they appear
to be more targeted at males and doesn’t think this is very fair.

3. My Focus Group
For this task, I decided to ask 4 people, two males and two females who fit the target
audience I have chosen for my rock music magazine. I think that using both genders
would give a better range of results and would help me finalise how I would like my
magazine. The four people who I asked were all rock genre fans.
I asked them 6 questions and here is the transcript:
For the Front Cover
Me: When you see a magazine cover what colours would you expect to see and which
do you think are the most striking?
Sarah: When I buy NME, the colours; red, white and black are used and I think this is
effective as they use it the same in every magazine.
Danny: I think that the most striking colour to use is red, black and white. Most
newspapers, magazines use this colour and I think it’s the best ones you could use.
Me: What would you like to see on the front cover of your own personalised magazine?
Samar: I think that to have a striking magazine cover you need catching cover lines to
grip the audience.
Chris: I want to see artists that I like. Really bold, attractive people, that’ll make me buy it.
Me: What type of language would you expect to read in a rock magazine?
Danny: I would expect a rock magazine to be very formal and boring, however I would
like it to be more personal and chatty.
Sarah: I think it’s very informative, I think it would be much more interesting if it was
colloquial.

4. For the Contents Page
Me: What would you expect to see on the contents page?
Samar: I think that it should simply just contain the page numbers, that’s the only reason I
read the contents page.
Chris: I like it when you get to see what bands are in the magazine, like if I want to read
about The Killers I can just flick to the page that they’re on.
Me: What ratio would you expect to have concerning images to text? Such as more
images to text?
Samar: I think that it would seem more obvious to have more text than images? It’s a
contents page and it needs to give enough information.
Danny: I like to see images so that it separates the page, it makes it look better and lets
you find what you need quickly.
For the Double Page Spread
Me: Would you rather the double page spread be Question and Answer or a descriptive
piece?
Danny: Question and Answer, they’re so much more interesting.
Chris: I think you should do question and answer, they’re less boring because the page is
more divided, rather than reading long sections of text about them laughing and flicking
their hair.
Me: What would you prefer the article to be about?
Sarah: I think it would be best if the articles were about the most trending bands. OF
course it’d be amazing if it was my personal favourite band, but that would be selfish.
Chris: Like Sarah said, but it would have to be an interview, I like learning things about
different bands and artists.