Recognising My Audience

Every magazine has to have a target audience / social groups, to aim itself at. It will have to be able to represent particular attitudes to: music, culture, TV, Film, clothing etc.

A good example of a magazine incorporating this is once again NME.

As well as Music, the NME is known to also dabbling in subjects outside of the music concept, such as fashion trends, celebrities and daily News. This magazine has been now stereotyped to appeal to the Indie Music scene, because of the coverage of primarily independent, upcoming (and in most cases) flamboyant artists / bands.

So how would my magazine represent a particular social group? Well what I have done so far, would almost represent the exact same thing. The Indie social group. I have done this by putting a brand new band on the front cover, as well as also advertising another 50 bands coming out in the new year. Something I have noticed with these sorts of magazines, is that the readers are always interested in new and upcoming artists, and the covers will always extensively promote this. So I took advantage and dedicated the cover to new artists. Readers will then feel they can use this for Uses & Gratifications to get informed of new and upcoming music. Reasons behind this are the fact that people will always want to differentiate themselves from others, thinking to themselves that they knew about new artists before anyone else did. This idea will be something that readers can conform with, as it will say something about status within the community, about how the Indie scene is one step ahead of everyone else.

My audience will need to be able to identify with the magazine's conventions. For example my audience represents the idea of a non-mainstream group, who don't like the idea of music, clothes or anything Else related to their culture becoming too commercialised, so they are always on the look out for something new. This will be addressed with my text introducing new bands to my audience. Their identity is something that will also have to be addressed through the representation of their Culture, clothing style music etc. My social group identify with the non-mainstream, non-comfromist group, so this will have to be taken into account when prodcuing my media text. For example, what sort of stuff do they find acceptably likable? i.e an unsigned band, rather than an extremely popular, radio friendly band.

Also something else I have done, is try to make my cover as eye catching as possible in order to attract as many people as possible. Devices such as bold, colourful and big fonts, as well as the picture of the band sitting on a pavement (which would also tap into the idea of rebellious Rock N Roll style which would appeal to the social group) have all been used to both attract and address my audience. All of the members in the band photo, are also wearing similar almost iconic clothing, which adds to the culture factor of representing my social Group using different things, in this case similar fashion.

Something NME did really well was putting their logo behind the artists shown, almost to show as if its not important to flaunt it anymore, as its immediately recognisable and well established. So I will possibly take this into account, and add it to my cover.