Research into the music magazine Market

Here is another presentation, created on Animoto, to quickly show all the leading, existing Rock magazines. I was important for me to research these, as if my music magazine, Loud!, were to go into the market, i would need to know who my competition was, and i'd need to do my research on each of the magazine companies in order to know their strengths and weaknesses.

Alternative Press

Price: $5.99 /  £3.76

Circulation per issue: 280,000

Frequency: Monthly

Alternative press - or, Alt Press for short - is an American music magazine based in Ohio. It generally provides readers with band interviews, photos, information on upcoming releases, and music charts. It was founded in 1985 by Mike Shea. At the time of its 20th anniversary in 2005, AP had grown to an average size of 112 pages per issue and now averages between 198 to 220+ pages a month. The magazine's monthly columns include "The AP Poll", "In the Studio", "AP&R (unsigned bands of the month)", "Chalkboard Confessional", "Musician of the Month", "My Favorite Gear", "Next Exit", "Gig Bag", "1000 Words", "Beauty and the Band", and "10 Essential." 

Classic Rock

Price: £5.50

Circulation per issue: 71,242

Frequency: Monthly

Classic Rock is a British magazine dedicated to the radio format of classic rock published by TeamRock. Although firmly focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s, it also includes articles and reviews of contemporary and upcoming artists it deems worthy of note. Despite starting as an on-off project it has become one of the UK's best selling music magazines.  In September 2010 it published its 150th issue and now has a higher circulation than the NME Magazine.

Vive Le Rock

Price: £4.99

Circulation per issue: 15,000

Frequency: Bi-Monthly

Vive Le Rock is an independent music magazine published in the United Kingdom which covers Punk, New Wave, Glam and Garage through to mod and primal Rock n Roll, and even the darker side of Alternative Rock. The editor for this magazine is Eugene Butcher, and he produced the first copy in June 2011, making this magazine fairly new to the market.

Mojo

Price: £4.60

Circulation per issue: 94,617

Frequency: monthly

MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. MOJO was first published on 15 October 1993; in keeping with its classic rock aesthetic, the first issue had Bob Dylan and John Lennon as its first cover stars. MOJO regularly includes a covermount CD which ties in with a current magazine article or theme. In 2004 it introduced the Mojo Honours list, an awards ceremony which is a mixture of readers' and critics' awards

NME

Price: £2.20

Circulation per issue: 23,924

Frequency: weekly

The New Musical Express, popularly known by initialism NME, created by Theodore Smythson, is a music journalism publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 14 November 1952 edition. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper

Q

Price: £3.99

Circulation per issue: 58,980

Frequency: monthly

Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology. Q was first published by the EMAP media group in October 1986, setting itself apart from much of the other music press with monthly production and higher standards of photography and printing. In the early years, the magazine was sub-titled "The modern guide to music and more". 

Rocksound

Price: £3.99

Circulation per issue: 15,005

Frequency: monthly

Rock Sound is a British magazine which champions rock music. The magazine aims at being more "underground" and less commercial, while also giving coverage to more well-known acts. It generally focuses on the pop, punk, pop-punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, heavy metal and extreme metal genres of rock music, rarely covering indie rock music at all. The tag-line "For those who like their music loud, extreme and non-conformist" is sometimes used.

Kerrang!

Price: £2.20

Circulation per issue: 42,007

Frequency: Weekly

Kerrang! is a UK-based magazine devoted to rock music published by Bauer Media Group. It was first published on 6 June 1981 as a one-off supplement in the Soundsnewspaper. Named after the onomatopoeic word that derives from the sound made when playing a power chord on a distorted electric guitar, Kerrang! was initially devoted to theNew Wave of British Heavy Metal and the rise of hard rock acts. In the early 2000s it became the best-selling British music newspaper

~

From looking at this research, i can start to analyse the given information in order to work out which of the existing magazines would be seen as competition to my own magazine. For example, i can see that Vive Le Rock would not be of any competition, as it is the least successful on the list, with a circulation of only 15,000. This magazine also has one of the highest prices, meaning readers would not like to pay so much for such an unsuccessful magazine.

Also, Alternative Press would not be of competition to me, as it is based in America, and is not sold in UK Retail stores. It is a very successful magazine, however the UK market is completely separate to the UK market, meaning that the two magazines would not have to compete.

Q is a magazine which would not be too much of competition either, as Q tends to include all types of music in it's magazine; not just rock. Infact, the majority of the time, Pop or Rap artists dominate this magazine's front cover, which is something my target audience would not approve of, therefore Q and my magazine have slightly different genres.

This leaves: Classic Rock, Kerrang, NME and Rocksound. Out of all of these, i think Kerrang! would be my biggest threat when marketing my product. (Besides the fact that Kerrang is the UK's leading magazine); this is because the bands and the genre of music included in Kerrang and almost exactly the same as what i would like to include in my magazine, due to the research i did into my target audience. Also, when doing my research into my target audience, i found that the majority of people who will read my magazine, would be willing to pay £3.99 for my magazine, whereas Kerrang is only £2.20. This means that Kerrang has virtually the same content as my magazine, but at a cheaper price, therefore i would have to consider my pricing of the magazine, and perhaps lower it, in order for my magazine, Loud! to be more appealing.