CONTENT ANALYSIS AND TARGET AUDIENCE

 In class I have been looking at what a target audience consists of finding out about, and adapting the knowledge from that to analyse music magazines to depict their target audience. To break down an audience you look at two aspects: Demographics (the characteristics of a person) and Psychographics (the way a person thinks). Using these I can break down what I think the targeted audience is for the publication.


 I have looked at NME and Kerrang! and looked at their adverts and features. I also compared the ads and features ratio to see whether the ads/features are more important and actually WHAT the ads and features are about and who they target.

NME 

Here is their masthead:

Just from their masthead you can already see who this publication may be targeted towards. Firstly, the colours used are red, black and white. The coloured used would be more appealing to males as the colours are bold, strong and more masculine. Also, this magazine would appeal to those who like to be 'in-the-know' as their slogan is simply, "FIRST FOR MUSIC NEWS". This shows that this magazine has all the latest and exclusive news which would appeal to consumers who like to know news first.

When I analysed the magazine, there were a substantial amount of adverts in the magazine. They all reached a limit of £50 or less(where the magazine itself is £2.30), which shows that this magazine would appeal to those with low disposable income. The actual adverts would appeal more to males, due to the content of them . For example, there was a 4 page spread of one advert, for the new video game, Halo:Reach. This would appeal to males more as it is a typical shooting/war game that boys would prefer to play. Another example is that the magazine advertises CD's to appeal to that gender and preferred genre of music. Also, i feel the magazine would appeal to those aged between 16-19 as the game is certified as 16 or over.

 The features in the publication mainly consist of male rock artists/bands which would appeal to males more as they could relate to what a male says rather than a female. Features included an interview with new bands and a growing popular band called The XX.

 When comparing the adverts with the features I noticed that almost both aspects balanced each other out, i.e. they contained almost the same amount of pages worth of adverts/features. Here is how many pages the adverts and features had in the magazine:

18.5 pages worth of features.

Here is an example of the genre of music that this magazine targets towards:
The XX: Crystallised.

                      

    KERRANG!
Here is their masthead:

The logo's design has a "smashed glass" effect, which adds a rebellious edge to the logo. This suggests that this will appeal to males more as it is a more masculine logo as it 's typeface uses a rough edged graphic, and the shattered glass looks more powerful. the shattered glass could also relate to it being the rock genre as rockstars are typically known to break things and be rebellious.

When I first started analyzing the magazine, the first page was already a four page spread of a new video game "Halo". This was the same advert featured in the NME magazine. This already establishes that the magazine will appeal to males as the advert is a fighting/war game, and would appeal more to males than females due to its' content. This would also appeal to those from the ages of 16-19, as the game is certified as 16 or over.

 The adverts also reached a money limit of £50 or less (and the magazine is £2.20), and therefore distinguishes that the magazine will also appeal to those with a low disposable income. NME also appeals to this majority. I feel that NME and KERRANG! share the same age range, gender and disposable income. However, one thing which separates the two is because of the genre of music they feature. The genre of KERRANG! is a rock genre, which opposes to NME as NME features indie music.

The features in KERRANG! Mainly consist of male artists/bands, which would appeal more to males as they would feel more related to the people in the magazine, rather than featuring females in the magazine.  Features included an interview with Weezer (an artist) and Green Day (an extremely popular band).

 In this magazine i also noticed how similar the ratio of features and adverts were. The amount of each are shown below:

17.5 pages worth of adverts.

Here is an example of the genre of music that this magazine appeals to:
Weezer: Teenage Dirtbag.