Analysis of audience questionnaire results

When sending out my questionnaire I tried to make sure that the people that were answering it were of the same age as my target audience so that I could generalise my findings to the target audience of my music magazine, which is older teenagers and young adults. This shows that everyone that completed my questionnaire was between 16 and 20.

From the results of this multi-answer question, I can see that alternative is the most popular genre of music listened to by people aged 16-20, with rock and indie close behind. This shows that my idea of producing an indie-rock magazine should be popular amongst my

target age range. It also suggests I should include other genres of alternative music in my magazine, especially as most people that said they listened to alternative, also listened to rock and indie. Punk and metal also seemed to be quite popular so I should consider including them in my magazine as well.

Because this was a qualitative question, in order to analyse the results I created a word cloud using Wordle.Com out of the answers given listing the bands they listened to so that I could clearly see all the bands and musicians listed, as well as seeing if there were any particularly popular bands.

From these results I can see that, although a range of artists are listened to from different genres, such as Rihanna an RnB artist regularly in the charts, and Bon Jovi from a more rock genre. However, the most popular artists mentioned seemed to be Arctic Monkeys, Tegan and Sara, The XX and My Chemical Romance all of which are alternative bands and artists. Although many different bands were mentioned, rock and indie seemed to be the most popular genres. Because of this I will try to make sure these are the genres I feature in my magazine, and I will try to include some of these bands and artists mentioned.

These results clearly show me that NME seems the most appealing music magazine out of the ones offered, with over 60% preferring to read it over Kerrang, Metal Hammer, The Rolling Stone and Top Of The Pops. Because of this I will look closely at NME and try to include some of their most popular features and ideologies, such as their focus on up and coming bands. This is also useful to me because NME has a similar aged target audience to me and focuses on similar genres of music to the ones I want to focus on.

The two people that had selected ‘other’ said that they did not tend to read music magazines.

These results show that new releases are very important to my target audience, with 85% of people saying they wanted to read about them in a music magazine. Interviews, festival and gig coverage and reviews are also important to be included in my magazine as over 75% said that they would like to see them in a music magazine as well. Gossip about bands was the least popular and so I will not put so much emphasis on this in my magazine.

As this was another open question, people were able to give longer, detailed answers in a text box. As over half skipped this question, I can assume there was nothing else they in particular wanted from the magazine. However, some answers that were given were ‘tour dates’ so I will try and make sure I include details of upcoming tours that bands featured in my magazine are going on. They also suggested information about the process of writing and creating music, so that the audience can get an insight into the creative process that goes into the development of an album. I will try and include this in interviews with particular bands, with a section based on how they wrote the album and the meanings behind it.

This showed that the majority of my target audience don’t actually read music magazines, so I will need to make sure my magazine offers the things the others don’t.

This showed that finding out about new bands is important to my target audience, so I will make sure I put a large amount of focus on promoting new bands and musicians, including short interviews and reviews on their music so that know what to expect from this band. I will make sure to only feature bands that are indie-rock so that my target audience are likely to enjoy their music and be interested in finding out about them.

These results showed that 70% of my audience would be willing to pay £.50 as a maximum for my magazine, where only 30% would be willing to pay over £2.50. I need to keep my magazine within my target audience’s price range so I will try to make sure my magazine is no more than £2.50.

The results from this question were 50/50 so I think my idea for a more niche music magazine, focusing on indie rock music should appeal to my audience. I will make sure to cover several other genres of music that are closely related to indie rock such as punk rock and pop punk.