There are two different types of market that a music magazine could appeal to. Therefore, I decided to research these two types of markets, to help me figure out which one to aim my target audience at. One is called mass market and the other is known as niche market. Mass market means they attract to an universal audience with one basic marketing strategy utilising mass distribution and mass media, whereas, niche market attracts to a more specfic audience.
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An example of a mass market music magazine is "Kerrang". It was first published in 1981 and is still running strong today, devoted to popular market of rock music in this current time, such as thrash, glam, grunge, industrial and metalcore sub-genres. They ensure they stay fashionable to younger audiences, by supporting the different sub genres of music in there magazine. Kerrang is the most sold biweekly music magazine, with an extremely high value of 364,000 people reading this particular magazine, indicating that it is aimed at a mass market audience. As they aim at younger audiences, this helps ensure that it is a universal market magazine, as these are the usual specific age group who read magazines.
Niche Market:
On the other hand, an niche market magazine, that appeals to a small amount of people is called "Shindig!" This particular magazine covers bands that were either around in the 1960's or include music that sound like it is from that era. The typical genres advertised in this magazine is Mod, Garage Rock, Psychadelic Rock and Freakbeat. These are all raw, guitar beased music and are predominately make to sound like the beatles. Compared to the hundreds of thousands that Kerrang, NME and Q sell, this magazine only sells 26,000 copies a month. However, by is being advertised on social websites such as Twitter and Facebook, this could the reason why there is as many as 26,000 subscribers. If it wasn't advertised this way, I doubt many people would have come across or heard of this magazine, as it is aimed at such a niche market. The fact that it is published around about 6 times a year, implies that it is advertised at an extremely niche market. Currently, they have only released 25 copies, which cost £4.95 and around £11 when they sell annual copies. Although this price seems rather extreme compared to other mainstream publications out there, people tend to but it who are into that sort of "obscure" music and wouldn't mind buying the magazine.
Conclusion:
After researching both mass and niche markets, I think I will try and ensure that I aim my magazine at girls aged mid teens to early twenties, as these are the majority of people who buy magazines. Even though Acoustic magazine isn't the most mainstream music genre at this moment in time, however, this genre is becoming extremely popular and therefore, I could try and create a magazine to make this genre become more mainstream and universal.
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