Target Audiences

I decided to look at ATM magazine and K-mag although both these magazines were not featured on the NRS website i have found out about their target audiences through studying their own websites. Both ATM and K-mag are focus largely on underground electronic music as well as other mediums such as art and fashion that are associated with these types of music. This limits the audience to people who follow these genres of underground music which although may be small when compare to the audience size of more mainstream genres such as rock music it is steadily growing. As these genres are unlikely to be heard on radio or Tv except for specialised programmes, younger people are unlikely to be exposed to these genres of music. From what i have learnt looking at both magazines websites i feel that neither magazine is meant to appeal to younger people who have little knowledge of the genres the magazines focus on, instead both magazines appeal to a slightly older audience who are already keen followers of the genres the magazines focus on.

It is for these reasons that i have decided to not base my target audience on class, wealth or attracting new readers instead i want to appeal more to people who already have a good knowledge of the genre and want to expand their knowledge even more. Although interesting new readers is important i feel that this should not be a large part of my magazine.

To be able to target my audience more efficiently i decided to look at K-mag's Facebook page and study the fans so i have a better idea of my demographic. The majority of fans that have commented on K-mags Facebook our male, there were 27 male fans out of the 30 fans that i looked at. Another recurring trend with the fans was that many of them were from the united kingdom although some were from other places in Europe, they also seem to share similar the majority of fans were aged between 20-30. I found that many of the fans i looked at had great interest in both Dubstep and producing their own music within the genre. This information has help me further establish my target audience, because my magazine includes similar genres and topics to that of K-mag it allows me to assume that both K-mag and my own magazine share the same target audience. From what i have seen on K-mags face book site i can assume that my target audience will consist largely of European males with an interests with either the same genre of music of genres associated with that of my magazine.

Although Mix magazine doesn't include Dubstep as a regular topic in its article it does make some appearances within the magazine, this is why i thought it would be useful for me find out the demographic for Mix mag as it is likely we share similar fans. Mix mag's demographic showed similar results to what i had found out from looking at K-mag both the Ages and Gender of the fans reinforces my ideas of my target audience.

I thought it would also be useful to look at the Myspace page of an artist from my genre and see if there are any recurring trends with the sorts of people who follow the music. Decided to look at the profile of 'Benga' an artists who has gained more popularity in recent years and has enjoyed some mainstream success.
Although Benga's fans do seem to share some similarities with the fans of K-mag there does seem to be more diversity amongst the fans of Benga, this is probably due to his recent mainstream success, making him more easily accessible to the general public. But despite this many of the same characteristics have appeared once again amongst the fans of Dubstep.