Rolling Stones Audience Research

MRI Spring 2014 Base: Adults 18+		Audience (000)		% Comp
	Adults	12,430
	Men	7,784		62.6%
	Women	4,646		37.4%
	Age 18 to 24	3,326		26.8%
	Age 25 to 34	2,892		23.3%
	Age 35 to 44	2,466		19.8%
	Age 45 to 54	2,125		17.1%
	Age 55+	1,621		13.0%
	Age 18 to 34	6,218		50.0%
	Age 18 to 49	9,752		78.5%
	Age 25 to 49	6,426		51.7%
	Age 25 to 54	7,483		60.2%
	Age 21+	10,729		86.3%
	Median Age	35.0
	HHI $150,000+	1,577		12.7%
	HHI $100,000+	3,634		29.2%
	HHI $75,000+	5,318		42.8%
	HHI $60,000+	6,704		53.9%
	HHI $50,000+	7,583		61.0%
	Median HHI	$65,294
	IEI $100,000+	666		5.4%
	IEI $75,000+	1,383		11.1%
	IEI $60,000+	2,119		17.0%
	IEI $50,000+	2,892		23.3%
	Median IEI	$33,616
	Employed	8,979		72.2%
	Professional/Managerial	3,087		24.8%
	Any College	7,679		61.8%
	Grad College+	3,243		26.1%
	Attending College	1,893		15.2%
	Single	6,207		49.9%
	Married	4,382		35.3%
	Any Children in Household	5,765		46.4%
	Own Home	6,435		51.8%
	Median Value of Home	$204,378
	White	8,929		71.8%
	Black	2,072		16.7%
	Asian	317•		2.6%
	Other	1,351		10.9%
	Spanish/Hispanic Origin	1,926		15.5%
	Metropolitan CBSA	11,102		89.3%
	A/B County	10,179		81.9%
	C/D County	2,251		18.1%
	Readers-Per-Copy	8.54
	Circulation (000)	1,433

Looking at the Rolling Stones website, you can see what their target audience is and how popular it is with various other types of audiences. From this we can infer that Rolling Stones is a male magazine that appeals to young adults, we can see this as 50% of their magazine consumption is from an audience aged 18 to 34. We can also tell this this table that the magazine is more popular with lower social class people, as it's popularity shrinks the higher the income of the consumer, however this could be due to it's target audience as young adults don't earn a large amount of money. So we now know that Rolling Stones is a young male adults 

music magazine.

Magazine Design Ideas - Front Cover

Here i have created my first Front cover ideas for my music magazine titled 'The Beat', using my previous research i have decided that i want to use R&B as my chosen genre for my magazine. Knowing this i used popular rap artist Tinie Tempah as my artist to represent my magazine. i also looked at other magazines such as Vibe and Q and used conventions from them that i have chosen to include in my first draft.

Looking at these two other magazines and the common conventions between the two, I started with the artist and how they appear in front of the title of the magazine, so using layers in Photoshop; first i imported a picture of Tinie Tempah from the web onto an A4 sized document, i then proceeded to crop out the background so that i could place my own design behind him. I then imported my maths head into the document and positioned it to behind the artist. Another convention that i used as the advertisement of the artists name on the cover of the magazine, for example on Vibe you can clearly see 'Kanye West' and the same goes for 'Tinie Tempah' with Q, so again using layers on Photoshop in bold text i typed 'It's Tinie Tempah' so that it's clear and easy to see that he's the artist on the front cover of my magazine, which in turn would satisfy my target audience and therefore sell more magazines. The last convention that i used was the colour scheme, as you can see in Vibe the colour scheme is Blue and Pink, suggesting that it's trying to appeal to both boys and girls, you can see a similar colour set used in Q, however i wanted to use orange and white for my colour scheme as they are more gender neutral, therefore appealing to a mass audience. 

Magazine Design Ideas - Contents Page

Here is the initial idea and first draft on my contents page, i looked at Vibes contents page as well as Rolling Stones and looking at the conventions of both of these magazines which incorporated into my contents page. I started by looking at the common conventions which is that both magazines have at least one picture on it, none of them are plan with only text, so again i used Tinie Tempah as my artist, however i followed vibes style more using only one image of the artist, my contents page is still very bland and needs many improvements as it's only a first draft giving me an idea to work towards for my final product. Secondly i looked at the use of background and i noticed in Vibes background is a giant V which represents the company, i liked this style and idea and i choose to use it in my own design by placing a B in the background of my contents page. However i didn't like the black and white colour scheme so i used conventions from the Rolling Stones contents page using white and warm colour (orange) to make the page stand out more and appear less boring towards my targeted audience.

Magazine Design Ideas - Double Page Spread

Last is my double page spread, to create my initial ideas for this i looked at the conventions of double page spreads in other magazines such as Vibe and NME, the first convention of these magazines is that a double page spread always talks about an artist, weather it be about there personal life or career it's on there. So again using Tinie Tempah as my modal i imported a photo of him and uploaded it to a A3 sized document, i looked at how both magazines kept within their style of design on these pages and so did i, i used the same colour scheme as before without it interfering with the text by placing white boxes there. Another convention is that in the corner most magazines put the logo of their magazine so that if someone finds the magazine open hey can still see what magazine it is as well as showing that all information presented was researched by the company so that no one can copy the page and say that they created it. On the double page spread the image is often a heavily Photoshoped image to create a more bold and desired effect and look.

Audience Research

Music Magazine Timeline

Billboard:

Billboard Advertising

Billboard (Originally Known as 'Billboard Advertising') was founded on the 1st of November 1894, by William H. Donaldson and James Hennegan. It was a trade paper for the bill posting industry.
The front cover was in black and white featuring a a photo of R.C Campbell, a advertising executive.

The Billboard

In February 1879 the company made a major change. The magazines new name was now changed and shortened to 'The Billboard', following this the magazine started to list fairs and ads for outdoor attractions which began ti increase in popularity.
At the start of 1961 'The Billboard' was changed to 'Billboard Music Week' as it became devoted to publishing content on the music industry. Before being changed to 'Billboard' in 1963.

Billboard Music Week

Billboard (Modern)

You can see the development of the magazine over the decades, Starting from a simple Black and White cover to a now colorful presentation that's standard in every issue, however as technology grow and developed so did Billboard. Colour Printing allowed Billboard to change their layout, highlighting different fonts and texts, creating conventions that are are standard and used today.
Billboard basically started out as a newspaper, due to the limitation in technology, relying on the text included on the front cover, however as time progressed it's become simpler, now using visual images to attract their target audience that display the content within the magazine.

Tribes

What are tribes?
Tribes are everywhere in the modern world, they define the young generation. But what are tribes, well Channel 4 wanted to explore the mind of teenagers; to see their perspective on life and what's important to them, being their grades or even their social status. They discovered a plethora of patterns within their lives, grouping them into 25 tribes that split into 5 categories.
Theses are:
Alternatives

• Young Alts
• Skaters
• Hardcore
• Hardcore Gamers
• Superfans

Mainstream

• Chavers
• Fan Girls
• Chavs
• Sports Junkies
• Blingers

Leading Edge

• Activists
• Creatives
• Urban Artists
• DYIers
• Scenesters

Urban

• Get Paid Crew
• Stylers
• Trackies
• Wastemen

Aspirant

• Trendies
• Vloggers
• New Casuals
• Hypebeasts
• Hipsters

Who is my magazine aimed at?
My music magazine is going to be aimed at the urban section of the tribes, mostly aimed at the Stylers tribe, this tribe represents status and style, it's about partying, looking good and staying ahead of cool.
Stylers hold strong on the UK Tribes map – innately cool and stylish, the rising influence of Urban fashion and music have made them a hugely aspirationsal Tribe for youth today. As luxe sportswear and Urban high fashion has hit the Aspirants, more young people than ever before are looking like a Styler and aspiring to their luxury lifestyle.

Tribes Pt 2

What do they look like?
Stylers are young urban adults, that like to stay ahead of fashion and trends.



These people are always on the move and in a crowd socializing, in and out of jobs normally part time as they're still in some form of education. They eat a lot of take out food such as pizza as they're always busy; partying or studying. They are innately cool and stylish, the rising influence of Urban fashion and music have made them a hugely aspirational Tribe for youth today.

Audience

When I started my research into what type of magazine genre i wanted to base my magazine on i thought it would be a good idea to also look into audiences, how they are affected by media, the various types of audience and how they are important to media in general, this is what i discovered:

Your audience is the group of people your product appeals to, in media there are various types of audiences,

• An individual or collective group of people who read or consume any media text.

Without audiences there would be no media, this is because media organisations produce various media texts to make profit

No Audience = No Profit

The mass media is becoming increasingly more competitive with each passing year, to attempt to attract different audiences to gain more profit to therefore produce more media text.

There are two types of audiences:

1. Mass Audience - Also known as 'Broadcast audience', this is audience that consume mainstream or popular media texts and content.
2. Niche Audience - This is contrasted to mass audience as it would be a small select group of individuals that have very unique interests.

How media affects the audience:

The hypodermic needle modal -

• This theory suggests that media is like a needle, in the sense that it injects various ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience.
• E.g. Watching an act of violence causes you to want to do something violent, mostly occurring in younger minds.
• The audience would be seen as passive audience.
• This occurs in both Mass and Niche.

Audiences can be divided into set categories of social class.

Group A (Upper Class):

• Lawyers
• Doctors
• Scientists
• Well paid professionals

Group B (Social-economic):

• Teachers
• Middle management
• Fairly well paid professionals

Group C1:

• Junior management
• Bank clerks
• Nurses
• 'White collar' professionals

Group C2:

• Electricians
• Plumbers
• Carpenters

Group D:

• Drivers
• Post sorters
• Manual workers

Group E:

• Students
• Unemployed
• Pensioners

Note: Categories aren't fixed, you can move up or down (Based on income)!

Uses and Gratifications Theory:

• The audience decides what to do with the media rather than the media having an influence on the audience...
• When an audience actively seeks media, they want to gratify a need - the message of the media is not being forced on them, they chose to interpret the message it's conveying.

E.g.

1. Identity
2. Information
3. Entertainment
4. Social Interaction

Mastheads

Looking at these mastheads i noticed that most of them don't consist of more than two to three different colours. First i looked at Top of the Pops, the pink colour clearly indicates that the target audience was girls as pink is commonly associated with young girls, compared to something such as Billboard which contains a various colours in a a simple font, this suggests that the magazine is aimed at both genders at a more mature age most likely mid 20's. Kerrang is a more unique masthead as although there are simple colours of black and white, the font has been distorted, containing cracks all over, making it bolder and standing out more, you can suggest that it's aimed at men because of this as the cracks connote chaos which can be associated with men as they want to appear strong and powerful, capable of breaking things.

  

I started by looking at the colour scheme being orange and purple and my initial title idea was 'Tune Production' so i created a background and logo to reflect this, originally i took inspiration from music notes and i attempted to incorporate that into the logo, i soon realized that it came out to blurry and looked to unprofessional. I later the changed it to the 'T' and 'Tune' playing about with different ideas before i came across 'Beat' i was finally happy with my choice and developed my whole blog as well as magazine around this, changing the colours to shades or red and orange.
There is a rule when choosing colours in designing almost anything, you should really use more than three colours this is because it can make the logo appear cramped and over crowed making it more harder to look at than appealing, the less colours used the easier it is to remember the logo therefore making it more recognisable. 

I recently then developed my mastheads further to blue from orange due to more feedback that i have gathered. It was pointed out me that my masthead appeared to be more pop or rap rather than R&B, R&B stands for rhythm and blues therefore i decided to change my primary colour to blue.

I wanted to make my masthead easily memorable so by using one colour and a simple font, just like the popular music magazine the 'Rolling Stones', the red colour and font is easily recognsable and remembered worldwide. I wanted to make my masthead relate to my target audience which is urban youth, the blue is a calming cold cold colour that conforms to the style of RnB, the style of music is calm and relaxing which is what i attempted to reflect in my logo.

Differences

Lighting

I decided to research into lightning because i wanted to capture the most professional looking picture for my magazine and i discovered lighting is key as it is what can make an image look real or fake when in front of the back drop, lighting can also highlight specific elements or hide others.

Magazine Research

I'm still unsure on if what genre i want to use POP or R&B so i choose to evaluate magazines that cover both genres, for example Vibe covers R&B and WE LOVE POP covers POP. In my Prezi presentation i look at three different magazines studying The front cover, contents page and double page spread. I was also comparing the differences and noticing common conventions that i will include in my own magazine.

Collage

I created a collage of what i considered conventions for both 'POP' and 'R&B' genres, i picked theses magazines because they are what i think i can take the most inspiration from, looking at these magazines i can see many common conventions as well as differences which i can use to make my magazine different, unique and yet still be relevant to either genre that I'm still choosing.