The very first thing that I found interesting from entering the site is how all of the corporation's music magazines (Q, Mojo & Kerrang!) are classed under “Men's Entertainment”. Considering my original thoughts on who purchases music magazines (teenage girls), this was an intriguing discovery. The audience research should reconfirm this; but it's still something to take to mind. We may want to try and make a slight female focus when we create our mag.
Bauer Music Group owns three music magazines (according to their official website). The first and most successful is Mojo (average circulation: 87,262). Mojo is a music magazine that delivers “a monthly dose of world class journalism and iconic photography. It represents a carefully crafted musical archive, providing its audience with an authentic, independent and emotional connection to the music. Classic sits comfortably with cutting edge, with quality and integrity being constant.”
This could be a slight problem for our music magazine idea, in that it would be professionally written, grown up and “with quality and integrity being constant”. However, our magazine would be weekly, permanently travel sized and focus a bit more on current and future music rather than classics.
Their reader base is a 77:23 split on gender (male:female) and they retail at £4.50 per issue.
Next up is Q magazine (chosen because a] The original title was “Cue”, as in “queuing up a song” but was changed so that it wasn’t confused as a snooker mag and b] A single letter title stands out on store shelves). It boasts to be the UK’s biggest selling monthly music magazine, however it’s sales figures are, on average, less than its sister magazine Mojo (average circulation: 80,418).
Q “is the arbiter of quality music. The magazine sits at the heart of a cross-platform brand that discovers great music of substance for its consumers. The Q brand has developed a worldwide reputation as a trusted and premium quality voice of musical authority amongst fans, musicians and the music industry alike - one that is founded upon Q's unrivalled access, world-beating exclusives and outstanding production values.”
Q is not specific to any one kind of genre of music. It’s a magazine where Metallica, Coldplay and Katy Perry can share equal space on the front cover and be treated with the same amount of appreciation for their genres. This is kind of what we are going for with our music magazine. However, their photography is some of the best in the industry and very expensive. If we are to keep costs down, we’re going to have to sacrifice some of that quality. However, we are going to be a weekly magazine rather than a monthly one, so we should be capable of filling a gap in the Q shaped market.
Their gender audience share is a 75:25 split (male:female) and their magazine retails at £3.99 an issue.
Bauer Media’s final music magazine is Kerrang! Kerrang, “is the world's biggest selling weekly music magazine and the original multi-platform youth brand for all rock genres. Kerrang delivers the hottest news, reviews, gig guides, exclusive features, posters, videos and more every week. In print, on TV, radio and online, Kerrang lives life loud for its army of dedicated, music loving fans.”
Unlike the previous two magazines, Kerrang! is a specialist music mag, dedicated to rock and metal. Also unlike the previous two magazines, Kerrang! is a weekly magazine. As such, its average circulation (43,033) and its price (£2.20) are significantly lower than Uncut and Q. However, these are the sorts of targets that our magazine should stick to. It would be unreasonable for a weekly music magazine to average 80,000 copies sold per issue. Mid 40,000’s would be a good target. Plus, our magazine will not be a specialist, so it's more likely to appeal to a broader range of people. Hopefully, with such a gap in Bauer Media's market, our magazine will be attractive to them.
Their gender audience share is not classified but, according to the website their audience aged from 15 to 35 and are mostly male (although, again, no statistics were given to support this).
All three magazines offer a subscription and special discounts for subscribing. Q has a yearly subscription price of £35 for 12 issues with the first 12 only costing £13.20. Post intial offer, this is a 27% discount on buying them individually from a store. Subscriptions (single issue or otherwise) make up 30% of the average sales of every issue (24,096).
Mojo has two subscription offers. The first is monthly and costs £2.50 a month (saving 44%); the second is annual and costs £40.00 (saving 26%). Subscriptions make up 23% of the sales of each magazine (20,266).
Kerrang! has two subscription offers. The first is monthly (with four issues) and costs £6.50 (introductory offer: £2.20 for the first four issues) per month (saving of 34%). The second is yearly and costs £90.00 a year (saving of 20%). Subscriptions make up 14.6% of the sales of each magazine (6,322).
This means that, for a high quality, high end and professional magazine; if we want to include a subscription offer, we may not want to be a weekly magazine. There's not enough gain from it and if people enjoy the magazine, they'll probably find it easier just to buy it in stores weekly. We should probably consider expanding our release window to, possibly bi-weekly. However, we'll leave that up to our survey to decide.
Wonderful analysis of the institution. I would consider if YOU (not me) feel it necessary to look into other avenues of outlet, maybe using new technology.
ReplyDeleteMrs R