Evaluation Question 1

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My magazine is one which focuses solely on rap and hip-hop music which is a genre of music which developed and began in the streets. The main group of people who listen to this type of music are young people from the age of 12/13 up to the age of 25. There will obviously be a small minority of people out of the age range who also listen to this genre of music but the majority of the people who would be reading the magazine and acknowleging it's features would be those in that age range. This was an audience which stood out to me due to the fact that, before the "Duppy" magazine which I created, there was not a magazine which covered music from the grime, hip-hop and rap genre in depth (especially UK music). This meant that I would have a large audience who would only have one option when it came to buying a magazine which suited their needs. 

In order to be certain of who my audience for this media product would be, I decided it would be sensible to conduct a survey related to my magazine and including questions revolving around the music genre of the magazine and also some of the content it would hold. I used Survey Monkey to conduct this survey which is a quick and easy website to use. All I was required to do was to input my questions and the multiple choice options of my selection. After this all that I needed to do was to advertise and publicise my survey so that it would get answers and come back with successful and accurate results. In order to publicise the survey I used my school email and asked if my fellow students would be willing to fill out my survey, this was a success and I ended up with 13 replies to my survey. This, in my opinion, is more than enough replies to gather accurate information for the magazine. 

The result:

There was a series of ten questions in the survey and these varied from "how often do you read music magazines?" to "how do you listen to music?". 

1 - This was question one of my survey and this question was designed to see what gender were more excited of the prospect magazine which I was going to create. Over 60% of the survey participators were male meaning more than half of them were. The other half were obviously female but there was not a large difference between the number of males and the number of females who took part in this survey. This showed me that this magazine had the capability of being one of a gender neutral nature. 

2 - The second question that I asked in my survey was, "how old are you?". This question was designed so that I could create a rough idea of who would be in my target audience for my piece of media in order to ensure that the content of my music magazine was suitable for those who would be interested in actually purchasing and reading it. Looking at my results, around 70% of my survey's participators were between the ages of 16 and 25 meaning that this sort of age range would be a suitable target for my piece of media. Also the fact that the content I was already planning to incorporate to my magazine was suitable for this age range was very convenient. 

3 - The third question in the survey for my media product was "what type of music do you enjoy?". This question only gave my candidates (the people taking part in my survey) to pick one genre of those that they were allowed to choose meaning that they would have to pick the one which they liked the very most. When I analysed the results it came to my attention that the most popular genre of music (in the survey) was rap music. This then further strengthened my point that rap music is a very popular genre of music in the age range which I was targetting. Six of the thirteen who took part in my survey chose rap music as their favourite genre to listen to, there were a further three people who selected the other category. These three people also specified different types of rap meaning that nine of the thirteen people who took part in the survey would put rap music as their favourite genre of music. 

4 - The fourth question in the survey concerning my music magazine was "what do you like about music magazines?". This question produced several anomalous results because they were all very even and there was only one of the options which came in front of all of the others which was that a music magazine was what kept them up to date. Four people chose this option where as the other three options (easy to read, snippets of information & other) were selected by three people respectively. This means that all four are equally as important as there was not an option which was not selected meaning that they are all relevant to take into consideration. 

5 - In my survey, the fifth question was asking participators what it was that they didn't like about music magazines. There were four options for those who took part, to choose from. Apart from the category 'other', the most popular choice was that there was too much opinion inside a magazine. Five people selected this as their reason, the other two options ('lack of important information' & 'lack of statistics') were only selected once meaning that they were not quite as important as the other two options. When i looked at the specified responses for what people didn't like about music magazines in the 'other' category, there was a mixed bag of feedback. One thing that was said was "sometimes there is too much information meaning that I skip past things that I need to see due to the fact that they are in the middle of a large bulk of text surrounding it which is less relevant to me". This response was in depth and gave me a lot to think about as did the others and they were really useful. This then further provided me with proof that creating a survey was a very sensible idea. 

6 - Question six posed a crucial question to the participants, this is what would make or break the idea of a rap music magazine. The question was as follows "how often do you read music magazines?". The multiple choice options that were provided were; daily, weekly, monthly, annually or do not read them. The majority of people picked monthly and this is due to the fact that most music magazines in the present day will not release issues more frequently than once a month and this is because it allows more important and eye catching information to be combined into one issue. There were a few people who chose the weekly option and the rest said that they don't read them. After looking at the previous questions in the survey, something appealed to me, this was that some people may not be reading music magazines due to the fact that there isn't one which meets the demands that they have. As a result of this, although a large number of people said that they do not read music magazines I was determined to be the one who put a change to that and actually bought back this form of media publicity. 

7 - The seventh question was a general enquiry as to how the people taking part in my survey listened to the music that they liked, in other words what software or application or device did they use. Several responses emerged but there was a particular trend in the results, this was that every single one of the formats (apart from illegal download) was a smartphone application (or had a smart phone application). This triggered an idea in my mind and that was to create a fictional smartphone application for the magazine which made the media product seem even more realistic. 

8 - For the eighth question in my survey, I decided to enquire as to whether those taking part in the survey would be interested in a music magazine which had a sole focus on the genre of rap. Nine of the thirteen people who took part said that they would be interested, the other three people said that they wouldn't but overall this meant that 69.23% of the thirteen people were fond of the idea. This meant that my idea of producing a rap magazine in the UK (which is where it would originally be distributed) would be a good idea. This is because rap music is a very meaningful and cultural genre of music and in the UK it is highly popular meaning that people are interested in any thing new which arises related to the topic. 

9 - I then asked the thirteen people who took part in my survey to inform me of how much they would be willing to spend on a rap magazine. This question was another make or break one because a lot of news can be accessed for free in the present day thanks to the use of online news bulletins and websites. On the other hand, some magazines still have exclusive content which can only be accessed inside their pages. It was made clear to me that others felt the same way because the most popular price range was from £2 to £2.99 which meant that people were willing to pay this much to get their hands on a rap music magazine which was produced in the UK and is all about the UK rap scene. Some suggested that between £1 and £1.99 was a suitable price range so i decided that the best price for the magazine would be somewhere in the middle and I made that £2 which is what the magazine was consequently priced at. 

10- The final question of the survey, question ten, was just a question to see which of the contemporary UK rappers were the most popular and there was a plethora of different responses which gave me a lot of names to work with and to incorporate into my magazine. Some people decided to put pop and soul singers down (probably due to the fact that they didn't enjoy rap music) but the majority stuck to the questions origin and picked the rap artist/group of their choice. 

In conclusion to this, I believe that  my use of survey monkey was extremely effective I was able to learn several things about the UK public and how they would react to a rap magazine and what they would expect from it. On the other hand I feel that, due to the fact that I am in the age bracket that I am targeting, and the music which I appreciate most is also rap I had a strong knowledge of what people would demand before taking to the public to ensure that these predictions were facts and not fiction.