Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?

My original aim was for my magazine to appeal to people who listened to indie/pop rock music but after some audience research, I discovered this was too small of a demographic to focus on. For this reason I decided I would also have stories about popular musicians. To ensure I did not divert too far from my original thought process, I would only have musicians who are famous enough that indie fans would be likely to like them too. I chose to have an X Factor winner as the story on my cover and double page spread as the X Factor is a show that a large amount of people are interested in. Although in most cases these people are not the same people in my target audience, this would be a good way of establishing a foothold in the market before going after stories of smaller artists that would not necessarily be as successful. Again to make sure it was still diverted to my target audience, I made reference to the fact that this artist was different to the people who usually appear on the show which would mean that people who don’t usually watch it, may have just to see her, which has been the case in the past.

The image on the front cover would appeal to many social groups as it is a young person who is wearing clothes that most normal teenagers would identify with. If she had been wearing an evening dress that was worth a lot of money, the readers would feel disconnected from her and may be put off buying the issue. Keeping the main person being addressed as someone most people can relate to means that more people will be willing to read about her to see what she will be doing in the future. I also achieved this by not putting a lot of effects on the image or cutting it down to make her seem slimmer. There has been a large push recently on using “normal” people on magazine covers so people may have respect for the magazine.

As I had planned before completing my magazine, I aimed my magazine at the type of people who enjoy knowing about artists before they appear in mainstream charts. As well as this being my preferred reader, these people are often very involved with social media. This has been proven to be a powerful resource so if people are proud of purchasing my magazine and post about it online, this will reach an even larger audience meaning further free advertising. The particular social groups who are interested in this will be the ones who use websites such as Tumblr which can reach thousands of notes and go around the world instantly. Since the magazine was changed to a more neutral representation of younger people, different social groups would be able to purchase it without believing it appeals to one more than the other. These other types of people are likely to use websites such as Facebook or Twitter where they are in contact with a different range of people.