Review of initial Ideas.

Rebecca Walsh.

Introduction.

I did an initial plan where I looked at what music magazines in the industry have in common. I then sent out a questionnaire that gave me more information about what I should include on my magazine. In my questionnaire I asked people what they would like to see on a magazine to make it more likely for them to buy it.

the price.

I found out from my initial research that most music magazines are priced at around £2.50 to £6. The more well known the magazine is the higher its price will be. For example in my research I looked at Kerrang and Rolling stone magazine. Kerrang was priced at £2.20, whereas Rolling stone was priced at £5.28. Rolling stone is a more popular and a more well known magazine than Kerrang and this is reflected by the price. In my questionnaire, I asked the question 'How much would you pay for a music magazine?: £1.50-£2, £2.50-£3 or £3.50-£4'. The most popular answers were equally £1.50-£2 and £3.50-£4. The people that chose £3.50-£4 chose this because they already expect most magazines to be sold at a high price. I find it surprising that the minority chose the middle option because it seems the most reasonable price out of the three choices. I will price my magazine between £3.50-£4 because people expect this from a music magazine due to seeing well known music magazines priced fairly highly.

Frequency of publication.

In my research of music magazines I found that half of them were published weekly and half were published monthly. I can't decide the frequency of publication for my music magazine based on these results alone so I have to look at my questionnaire results. My questionnaire results state that more people buy magazines weekly rather than monthly. Seeing as weekly is the favoured option I will choose the frequency of publication of my magazine to be weekly.

Issue size.

I did not ask this question in my questionnaire because I did not feel that a lot of the public who answered my questions would be serious about the number of pages in the magazine as it is not something that they would take much interest in. In my research, I found out that the issue size in music magazines varies from around 60 pages to 180 pages. My magazine will have a number of pages that is in the middle of these numbers. I will choose for my music magazine to have an issue size of 120 pages. This is not too many pages so the reader gets tired and bored and not too few pages so that the reader feels unsatisfied.

Regular content.

Feature articles.

When I did my research I looked at all of the magazines and found that the feature articles in each of them where interviews. People  that answered my questionnaire said that they really like to see interviews in music magazines. I have made my decision that the feature articles that I display on the front cover of my magazine will be interviews. Another feature article I saw during my research was an article about an artists that had passed away. This shows that not all feature articles have to be interviews. Another feature article could be about a big step in an upcoming band or artists career.

colour scheme.

The colour schemes of the music magazines that I researched usually remained consistent. The colour schemes are usually made up of no more than three colours. A question  I asked people when they filled out my questionnaire was 'What colours would you associate with the Indie genre?' The people answering this question could choose more than one colour and the response was quite clear. The two equally popular colours that people associate with the Indie genre are white and red. Black was also close to this. Blue was not a very popular choice. I have therefore chosen red, white and black as my colour scheme. 

competitions.

In the music magazines that I researched I found that the competitions were usually to win band merchandise and very rarely anything else. I asked the public what they would like to have the chance to win and the most popular answer was concert tickets. I feel that this would get more people to enter these competitions. This has made me decide that the prize to win for a competition that will be shown on the front cover of the music magazine will be concert tickets to go to see upcoming artists perform.