Audience

Audience Demographic

Every successful product must consider different elements that must appeal to a specific audience. These must all cater to the audience's need, and it is necessary for me to ensure this when it comes down to producing my own magazine, as I must create a magazine cover, contents page, and feature article of which all are successful in this particular way in order for it to appeal to the target audience. The reasoning for having a specific target audience to base my magazine on is because I will be able to gain knowledge of what the audience desire from this genre. Hall and Holmes (1998) said “Any media text is created for a particular audience and will usually appeal most to this particular target audience” which means that I must conform to this in order to be successful. If I do not know my audience and profile them accurately, they will unlikely be drawn to my product and it will not be a success. There are differing ways of categorising an audience, I will consider representation theory, social class and the Uses and Gratification theory.

There are two different types of audiences, a niche audience and a mass audience, which magazine institutions/creators pitch their magazines to. A mass audience is a large, mainstream audience who consume who consume mainstream or popular culture, such as Kerrang, Top of the Pops or Billboard. In terms of marxism, this is said to be made up of predominantly working class people. By contrast, high culture is usually associated with broadsheets, opera, ballet and BBC Four; music magazines which cater for this audience are Music (BBC) and ClassicFM.

Niche audiences are quite different. They are a lot smaller than a mass audience, meaning that magazines who target niche audiences are able to target group of people who are not mainstream. Niche magazines are usually very influential, e.g. in terms of Marxism, upper class/middle class control the media may wish to see 'high culture' programs, the reasoning for the launch of BBC Four, for those who wish to see/ hear  artistic high culture programs. This is not the necessary audience for a niche magazine, they can be a small dedicated group who advertisers feel are worth targeting/marketing products for. Examples could include NME, Metal Hammer, and Vibe.

Indie magazines are predominantly targeted towards male, though have secondary target audiences of females, as the range of people who are interested in this genre is wide. You can tell automatically whence reading NME that the main Indie magazine on the market targets itself towards males, though other magazines such as Paste appear to be targeted more so towards females. Personally, I feel as though my magazine might be something of which portrays and represents females slightly more than males, as I am a female who is interested in the Indie genre, and know what they want from the magazines, though I will still research into what others of this gender and interest feel as though they need out of the magazine. Therefore, my indie magazine will be primarily targeted towards females. I will not sexualise any females in pictures on the magazine, as I want to represent the audience in a positive way. Laura Mulvey states in 'The Male Gaze', that females are placed in the media for the pleasure of places in a sexual sense. She believes that males control the media, and therefore are able to control the way in which females are represented.

Concerning the age of the audience, relatively young people are targeted, due to the fact that it is relatively 'new' music, which an older audience will not be entirely familiar with the genre, nor will they be comfortable with it because they would be used to the music which was dominant throughout their generations youth, from when they were students. In consideration of this, I have decided to aim my magazine towards people between the ages of 16-27, predominantly students. Though, the majority of these people will not have disposable income, so I will have to ensure the magazine is relatively cheap, but also effective in persuading the audience to purchase it with generic conventions and features which will appeal to them, and I intend to discover these aspects with a survey on the website Survey Monkey.

The basis for the system is, effectively, money. The audiences of which are stereotyped to have more of  a powerful disposable income are A and B, compared to C,D and E. This is due to the fact that higher classes do in fact have more money, and so are able to indulge more often in magazines. However, it is also presumed that A and B audiences prefer high culture, e.g. classical music magazines, rather than the magazines of which C,D and E are stereotyped to enjoy commercial mainstream products such as Top of the Pops, or kerrang. These make up a larger proportion of society, making this the 'mass audience.' Because I have chosen to target students, the class of which I am targeting is E. The secondary class is C/D- lower 2nd and working class, as I am not solely targeting students, but also a young, working audience who are interested enough in the genre that they are attracted to my magazine and want to spend their money on it. Most people of indie culture and bands have an ethnic origin of white British. Therefore, I will represent my audience in this light, and ensure that the primary audience is females age 16 to 24. The secondary will be males age 16-19. I feel as though males any older than this would not be interested in an indie magazine, but this very specific target is, I feel, accurate in the knowledge of audiences and what each wants. 

Both the primary and secondary audience will be looking for the same things in a magazine. Because indies have the tendency to want to search for new bands, as they want to know the unknown to ensure they are unique and unlike anyone else. They also want information on these unknown bands to show others that they have a vast knowledge in an area of which the others do not, making them seem superior in musical knowledge.  Personally, I believe that they also sneakily look for articles which could assist them in becoming more indie, so they do not fall behind if anything changes on the indie scene. 

When relating my own product to my target audience, I know that I must ensure my magazine is minimalistic in some ways. It cannot be crowded, as this is the way in which pop and mainstream magazines behave. They tend to be over-crowded and excite the youthful audience they aim themselves at; exactly what I do not want, as I am aiming my product at an older audience who find less to be more. The simplistic nature of my magazine could be very attractive to them. I will use neutral colouring, as bright and bold colours represent fun, happy mainstream music, whereas indie is solemn and 'cool', deserving of neutrality. 

How my audience will be represented through: 

Star Vehicles

It is not possible for me to actually bring a star vehicle in for my photo shoot and magazine article/interview, as it would be far too expensive. However, I do have a friend of whom is a singer; she is indie herself, so will be perfect for the part. As I stated earlier in this post, indie people want to acquire information on new and unknown bands/artists, so Taylor, my model, could be part of the introducing section. She has qualities of which could be considered as a star vehicle, so I will emphasize on these, such as her indie fashion, hair, attitude, and general appearance. 

Shot Types

In terms of camera work, I have decided upon using a mid-shot, as this is a common convention of near to every magazine, and is incredibly successful. The model will be in a 3/4 position so the audience can see her emotion in a way that is not flat. She will not be facing the camera, which I feel as though the audience can relate to in the way in which people who enjoy indie culture are stereotyped to believe that their music sense is better than everyone else's. 

Typography 

The typography has the potential to be a substantial section of the magazine which represents the audience correctly. I have decided to use Myriad Pro as the standard font for my article, as it is simplistic and not difficult to read or to produce. I will also use a typewriter font from a website to use on quotations from the interview. I have seen a lot of indie photography and art which contains typewriters or their lettering, as they are vintage and have pleasingly rough aesthetics. 


Ideology

Ideology is an important factor to consider when creating a product because I have to represent the ideology my target audience wish to see. Ideology refers to the systems of beliefs that is constructed and presented by a media product. As Marx claims, the dominant ideologies are those that already underpin society. This can differ country to country, for example a fashion magazine made for a UK audience will differ to one made for a US audience, Spain or Iran. Athusser argues something similar, that ideology is a force in its own right. Class rule is sustained by organized power in two ways, by force (military, police and laws) and at an ideological level by subtly reinforces the ‘dominant’ values through the media, education and religion. Chomsky argues that the mass media is used to divert attention from real issues such as poor living conditions, unemployment, global warming etc. He maintains people prefer to escape into popular culture (music magazines that often discriminate again groups who are not dominant, e.g. women, people of different class etc) than indulge in educational and informing texts. This relates to 'escapsim' (Blumer and Katz, Uses and Gratification Theory, 1974).

The Uses and Gratification Theory theory is the opposite of effects theory because it relies on the premise that audiences have free will and choose to consume certain things for different reasons. The theory was developed in the 1960s and was in expanded in 1974 by Blumer and Katz who suggested a series of possible reasons why audience members might consume a media text:

•    Diversion (escape from everyday problems - emotional release, relaxing, filling time etc.)

•    Personal relationships (using the media for emotional and other interactions e.g. substitution gossip magazines for friendship).

•    Personal identity (constructing their own identity from star vehicles in media texts, and learning behavior and values – useful if trying to fit into a new country/culture)

•    Surveillance (information gathering e.g. news, educational, weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains etc).

THE FOUR C’S (cross-cultural consumer characteristics):

This is one of the earliest, but still most popular, ways of profiling audiences. It profiles the audience in terms of wants and needs, not simply demographic. The categories are as follows:

•    Mainstreamers: this is the largest group. They are concerned with stability, mainly buying well-known brands and consuming mainstream texts.

•    Aspirers: they are seeking to improve themselves. They tend to define themselves by high status brands, absorbing the ideologies associated with the products and believing their status alters as a result.

•    Succeeders: people who feel secure and in control – generally they are in positions of power. They buy brands which reinforce their feelings of control and power.

•    Reformers: idealists who actively consume eco-friendly products and buy brands which are environmentally supportive and healthy. They also buy products which establish this ‘caring and responsible’ ideology.

Individuals (highly media literate, expects high-production advertising and buys product image not product, requires high-profiling sophisticated advertising campaigns).