Questionnaire Results

After the completion of my questionnaire I asked 50 people, a fair split of 25 females and 25 males, to fill out the form and return it to me so I could read through and analyse the results. I gave my questionnaire to people between the ages of 14 and 71, ages I felt were minimum and maximum ages for people who would purchase and read a magazine like mine. The following is a summary of the feedback I got from the returned, completed questionnaires.
As mentioned earlier I gave an equal number of questionnaires to each sex, and the age range of people answering was broad. However, the vast majority of people asked were between 16 and 20. This isn’t too much of a disadvantage for me though as this is the ages of which I hope my product will attract and appeal to most.
When asked what their most common source of music consumption was, the majority of people answered YouTube to be theirs. This could possibly be due to the fact that YouTube is an easy and free way to access music of all genres and from all era’s, past and present, even brand new releases. This answer was interesting as it lead me on to think of how, once my magazine brand was established and starting to run successfully I could look to linking it with YouTube, and possibly even advertising for the website in exchange for adverts displayed on their page.
The response I got when I asked what particular genres of music people were in was vast! Dance, pop, hip-hop, grime, r’n’b, rock, garage, and house were all mentioned, with genres such as jazz and reggae also put on some forms! This clearly showed me that the public’s taste in music was very varied, with everyone having such individual likes and dislikes that not one particular genre is favoured. Taking this into consideration I decided that, to ensure I was attracting as much of the general public as I could to my magazine, I would not focus on one particular genre but create a magazine that featured all different types of music genres.
Finding out what peoples ‘main music interests’ are would help me look for particular genres of music people enjoyed and what particular artists were preferred. As with the previous question there were no trends shown, with everyone stating they enjoy different artists, some enjoying soloists, some bands.
V Festival and Reading Festival were the two most mentioned festivals given. The next question and the one following wanted to know festivals and other events that the person had been to and there were many different answers given. One particular venue that was regularly mentioned though was the 02 arena in London. This would appear to be a popular place for people to go and watch their favourite music artists perform, so could be a venue to closely follow in the magazine.
‘NME’ and ‘Q’ magazine seemed to be gain the most interest out of the people who completed my questionnaire, with ‘Kerrang!’ closely following these. This would show me that it is important to look at all existing music magazines as not one particular one stood out dramatically from the rest. By then taking successful conventions from each magazine I could incorporate these into my own and create a magazine that would automatically be at the standard of (if not higher) the real media products that are already on the music magazine market.
There were lots of things listed as answers for the next question; ‘what attracts you most to a music magazine before you buy it?’ People said that the articles mentioned on the front cover were important, as well as the images used, showing that some people do judge a book, or in this case a magazine, by its cover. Others said that they would be attracted to the magazine that offered the best competitions to enter or gave away the best free gifts with the magazines. Before, I didn’t realise that simple extras such as these could be the attracting point to so many people, but now I will be sure to incorporate these ideas into my own product.
The type of music magazine articles that people most wanted to read were ones on new music releases or what was soon to be released, inside stories on famous artists and information articles about festivals, concerts and other music events. This, with the fact that many other types of articles were also mentioned, showed me that people like a variety of articles and by trying to cover stories on lots of different sides of the music industry would make my magazine more attractable to a wider audience.
People mainly said that they buy magazines on a monthly basis or once every 2-3 months. This confirmed to me that if a produced my product on a weekly basis I may find it difficult to sell a large quantity each week, especially if I wanted to ensure I made a profit from each issue. However, I also decided from this information that to not lose custom due to people not wanting to wait long for the next issue, I would bring my magazine out on a monthly basis. This way everyone would get a chance to buy it and would only be paying £2.50 a month to get every issue. Some people in this question, however, said that they do not ever buy music magazines. This gives me more determination to ensure my product appeals to everyone, including the people who don’t consume these magazines.
To ensure I don’t under-price or over-price my magazine I asked what would be the maximum people would pay for a music magazine. The answers I got ranged from £2.80 to £5.00. This showed me that people are willing to pay quite a lot of money for music magazines so as long as I do not price my product much above about £4 then a lot of people would be more than happy to pay for it.
As expected there was a varied response from people, as to what their all-time favourite song was, with everyone giving a completely different answer to the next person.