Media Survey

1. Detailed Audience Feedback

2. First Impressions Of Magazine The first question of the survey was asking people what were their first impressions of my magazine having had a look at my front cover, contents page and double page spread. The options ranged from Excellent to Shocking. Thankfully no one voted for any of the bottom 3 options (Shocking, Poor and Below Average). The 3rd most popular option was Excellent with the 2nd most popular option being Average. The most popular option by quite a large margin was very good. This shows that most of the people surveyed felt I produced a very good magazine but that it still could be better.

3. Genre Of Music The next question asked what genre of music do you feel the magazine is covering. There was 9 options given including the option of other incase a genre wasn’t included on the list. When in the planning stages of my magazine I said I wanted the magazine to be rock/indie based so the results to this question are really pleasing. While 14% voted for pop the rest of the 86% of people surveyed either went for Rock or Indie. Rock was the leader in the category out of the 2 and this doesn’t surprise me as I feel as the magazine grew it became more and more rock based.

4. Would You Buy? The next question was a fairly straight forward one of Would you buy this magazine?, the price of the magazine was also included for readers to make their mind up. Unfortunately despite the previous positive reviews it seems my magazine hasn’t done enough for most of the people surveyed to want to buy it, with the option no just coming out on top with 57%. While this looks disappointing there could be various other reasons behind this IE, people not actually buying music magazines.

5. Age Group The next question asked what age group do you think the magazine is aimed at? Only 2 options gained votes here, with the 11-16 range getting 7% and the poll winner with a massive majority was 17-21 with 93%. Before the production of my magazine I said I would aim the magazine towards the 18-35 range so I’m pleased this pretty much covers all of the range that won. However I’m slightly disappointed no one thought it covered the 22-30 age range as I didn’t want to exclude this audience.

6. Gender The next question asked what gender did they think the magazine was aimed it. Now when I set out to design my magazine I didn’t really have a set gender in mind and was hoping to appeal to both, though if I had to choose I’d have probably leant towards Male. Because of this the results shown above please me, the Male options win it but the Female option also got it’s fair chunk of votes. This suggests that the people surveyed could feel that it’s aimed at both genders – this could have been an option to include in the poll if doing so again.

7. Easy To Read? The next question asked whether the magazine was easy to read or not, there was 2 options, yes and no. No need for a pie chart here as everyone surveyed went for the yes option. Obviously this is very pleasing as the readability of a magazine will effect the judgement for pretty much every other aspect of the magazine. If a reader can’t see easily what they are looking at it’s doubtful they’ll take much time out to have a proper look at it.

8. Resemblance The next question asked was ‘Do you feel there is a resemblance between the 3 pages (Front cover, Contents and Double Page Spread)?’ As you can see for this the results are split but the two negative options only gained 7 percent of the vote with the most negative result getting 0%. The 2 most popular options were noticeable resemblance and sort of similar, the poll results show that there is a resemblance but there’s obviously a few needed improvements to give my magazine a clear resemblance.

9. Magazine Like Banned The next question on my survey was asking what music magazines that are on the shelf at the moment is my magazine most like. When I set out to create my music magazine I was hoping to create it in the mould of NME or Kerrang but mainly Kerrang. The results here shown that I’ve achieved my goal as over half of the people surveyed feel my magazine is most like Kerrang. One of the weaknesses of this question was that a quarter of the people answered other. Maybe there’s a magazine out there that I’m not aware of that’s like my music magazine. Because of this it would have been a good idea to ask the people voting other to state the name of the magazine that they are thinking of.

10. Areas To Improve The penultimate question was asking what area of the magazine do you think needs improving. The results were fairly split which can be taken 1 of 2 ways, that everything needs improving or that the magazine was really good and thus it was hard to choose 1 particular area. The results did confirm my suspicions though in that the contents page was the weakest area of my magazine. When in the planning stages I said I wanted the contents page to be simple and basic but maybe I stuck to these principles too much and if I did the project again I would look into sprucing the contents page up a bit.

11. Additional Comments The last question of the survey allowed the person being surveyed the chance to put their own thoughts on the design of my magazine, here are some of the responses. I liked the look and the feel of it. Not too "in your face" and although a clear want to inspire and connect with the hardcore music fans also allowing for the more floating fan in a non patronising, welcoming way. JP For someone who didn't know what type of music she played, it wasn't easy to find that out from the interview. I guess if you didn't know The Eels then you'd be a bit lost. Good stuff mate, 1 or 2 things: 1) In the interview, on the inspiration question the line "I hope my own music can make aS big an impression as E's has been to me." Also sounds a bit dodgy - not sure if you should interview someone who actively encourages hard drug taking!! 2) Content's page - "one of the country's hottest new artists", not countries I feel one of the most important aspects of work is to get some constructive criticism at the end, nobody produces perfect work so to get some feedback on where you’ve gone wrong and possible improvements from the outside is an absolutely important part of the project process.