Draft evaluation Question 3

Any magazine that wants to make it out in the real world market needs a media institution to publish their magazine and promote it to the potential fans that could be interested in buying it. But as well as this in this day and age, it is also about synergy and the use of websites, video and pictures all in one place as well as the paper copy of all the articles. For my magazine I chose Bauer magazine group. I chose them for many reasons.

Firstly, I chose them because they currently publish two highly known music magazines, ‘Q’ and ‘Kerrang!’ These two magazines are two of the most popular in the U.K and both have a crossover of music genre toward my chosen music genre, meaning Bauer media group are already experienced in publishing high quality and high demand magazines. As well as this these two magazines also appeal to a rather large majority audience of male students. After analysis I saw that Kerrang! Has a mean age of reader of 22, which exactly the sort of audience member I am looking for. While also looking through their media pack it showed that 87% of their readers buy every issue. This shows that Bauer know how to publish and promote a top quality and well selling magazine. Also while studying Q’s media pack it showed that they also have a male majority audience at a percentage of 68%. Q magazine also has a huge readership, a total of 570,000 according to a reader poll in 2008. All of this information tells me that Bauer media group know how to make a magazine popular and gather them a patriotic and loyal fan base.

Another reason I chose them was because of what I believe the future of music magazines is. More and more technology is being used for everything now, and books and newspapers are now going out of trend and being replaced by technology based platform versions of them. This can only mean that soon the music magazine fan base will turn to technology in the very near and upcoming future. However, Bauer media group also have a strong hand in television in radio. The most significant to me of which is Kerrang! TV and radio. These are ran and available to everyone and play music of their specific genre, suited to their target audience. These stations while also bringing in more fans can also are used to promote the magazine which again would end up making a more successful magazine.

However I believe the fact that they have already got a hand in the technology platforms of music is the biggest advantage to choosing Bauer. With the ever growing popularity of e-books and online newspapers the almost certain decline is paper magazine sales must be ever faster approaching. Therefore, choosing Bauer media group means that with their already strong technology hand we can create a website for extra articles, news and videos; we can have a radio station playing the best music from our genre while also promoting our other various items such as our magazine. Plus, we could then move on to applications for phones and online subscribers to our online magazine. I believe choosing Bauer media group means we will have a head start on adapting to the technology world once the decline in magazine sales arrives.