Who would be the audience for your

media product?

When conducting my planning and research tasks, I discovered that the most suitable audience for my style and genre of magazine should be readers aged between 16 - 25 years (Hartley’s seven subjectivities). Stereotypically, the genre of indie/pop music is more associated with a younger audience, mainly due to the fact that the artists featured in my magazine are younger than the average music artist. The denotation of the style I chose to be incorporated throughout my media product is more attractive to this age range, again, stereotypically an older audience would be more associated to more toned down colours as well as fonts so therefore wouldn’t have an interest in my magazine.

The contents of my media product consist of primarily music, with some features of fashion and film. As my magazine contains the most up to date, modern trends and fashions, the younger audience will be most suitable for my magazine.

When writing the articles (specifically the editorial) for my magazine I ensured that I incorporated colloquial language so that my magazine had a conversational feel so that my readers feel safe, and comfortable when reading my magazine.

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs the readership for my magazine would be the group ‘survivors’. This social group like to feel comfortable and secure whilst reading a magazine, which is what my magazine aspires to provide and will offer through features such as colloquial language (As shown on previous slide). This will make these people feel welcome as the language is not sophisticated and difficult to understand, it’s conversational.

As my target age group is that of a younger one, I aimed to keep my price as low as possible. by pricing my magazine at £3 ($1.90) it makes it affordable for this group of people. I decided to price my magazine at £3 because my magazine of inspiration ‘CLASH’ costs £3.99 and because the two magazines are very similar in style and genre, it was important that I kept the price lower because I need to compete so that my magazine makes more sales.

At the ages of 16 - 25 my target audience aren’t likely to be earning as much as a mature group of people so therefore this is another reason why my price is relatively low. By deciding to keep all issues of my magazine at this price I will not lose appeal from the readers and again the ‘survivor’ demographic will keep consuming my media product.

Another theorist that I decided to take into consideration when selecting the audience I wished to target with my media product was Katz, and his ‘Uses & Gratifications’. According to this theorist my magazine would be used by the readers for ‘Surveillance’, meaning that my readers are buying my media product to discover what is happening in the world around them.

My magazine supports this category because within each edition of my media product there will be several articles on new and upcoming artists/concerts/festivals, for example:

as well as a small number of fashion and film articles:

By containing several different topics within my magazine it means that my reader will be ‘informed’ on not only the music industry, but both fashion and film as well.

After conducting substantial amounts of research into ‘CLASH’ magazine I came to the conclusion that the majority of the models/featured artists are of a white ethnicity, excluding a few different raced models. (Examples below)

As I am choosing to ‘replicate and adapt’ (Steve Neale - 1980) the features of this magazine I chose to use a model from a white ethnic background:

By using a model of this ethnic group I will stereotypically be appealing to a very large group of people (Specifically white males and females), however if I was to create an entire magazine, I would ensure to include artists of different races and ethnicities so that my magazine appeals to the majority of the younger population and would not racially profiled in any way.

By choosing to use a white female I am following the stereotype of an indie/pop genre music magazine, if I was to create an anti-stereotype for my magazine I could use a model of a different ethnicity (For example African/American) however, if I was to do this I would portray a different genre of magazine, as stereotypically, a model of this race would normally feature on the cover of a hip hop/rap magazine.

To conclude, my choice of codes and

conventions in which I’ve used

throughout my magazine pages would

best appeal to the ages of 16 to around

25 years of age.