An idea!

My strongest idea, i felt, was to create a magazine dedicated to the Alternative Rock scene. In past years, Kerrang has held the monopoly for this genre, however, in recent years it has become clear they have altered their base genre. Kerrang have moved towards Pop-Punk, promoting bands such as All Time Low and You Me At Six. This, I feel, has left a massive gap in the market. My immediate research was to read comments posted on the publications website, this was aimed to give me an initial indication of whether Kerrang had began to lose its original fan base and to see whether a gap in the market for a new alternative rock magazine existed. It soon became clear that Kerrang was losing its alternative subscribers. A user called “/mu/tant” commented on how he hasn’t “bought Kerrang in almost a year” due to it turning into a “borderline pop magazine”. Many news articles comment sections became war grounds between those who aren’t happy with the direction Kerrang has progressed in and those who have become fans in the wake of its change of direction.

This initial research made it clear to me that there was definitely a gap in the market. However, it was important to identify which demographics and psychographics would buy my magazine. A demographic is information that can be labelled and put into statistics, such as age, gender and race. This creates the profile of the average buyer and shows a target market. Psychographics build upon this information, portraying what is important to your target market and shows exactly what they want. Understanding demographics and psychographics will allow me to formulate a magazine that has the highest chance of success as, in theory, with the correct research, it will be exactly what my target market want!