AS Media Studies: November 2013

Focus Group Video Response

The focus group video was useful as it gave me an insight into what an average person on the street of my target audience’s age is interested in. I learnt that music magazines are not hugely popular amongst young people as none of my focus group bought them regularly or even occasionally. I also learnt that what attracts people to music magazines are interesting cover stories and freebies, that the most attractive giveaways with a magazine are downloads and posters, the most popular competition prize would be concert/festival tickets, that a mix of covering both new and old music is preferred with slightly more emphasis on new music, that more focus on artist interviews is preferred to more on album and gig reviews and finally that people would buy a music magazine primarily to learn about new music and to be kept informed about artists they like.

This information has helped me in making decisions about my magazine as it has given me information on what people prefer, such as the fact they would prefer a free download to a free CD; which would help reduce costs for my magazine, what people would prefer to win in competitions and what people would like to see covered in a music magazine. This information helps as I can apply what people would want to my magazine to widen the products appeal to my audience and therefore increase the size of my audience.

The findings that surprised me were the lack of popularity of music magazines amongst my focus group and the fact that people would prefer more artist interviews to gig and album reviews. I found the latter particularly surprising as the group said they would buy a music magazine to learn about new music however apparently they would rather hear what an artist has to say rather than actually read about the quality of their music, which I think is an interesting point. However this has helped me in planning my magazine as I will now focus more of my features on the artist themselves rather than the music.

The main changes the focus group session feedback has made to my planning is to include a free download, rather than a CD, as a giveaway as this seems like a more popular option for my mostly teenage and young adult audience and would also save the magazine money on CD pressing. I will also focus more of my features on artist stories and interviews rather than reviews of concerts and music as this is what my focus group has told me would interest them more. Finally, I will take the advice on my focus group of covering both new and old music by having a main feature about an older artist, to balance out the old/new, or perhaps an article on new artists heavily influenced by older artists.

In conclusion I believe the focus group session has been very helpful to my product as it has given me feedback on ideas and about what a reader would want and has allowed me to use this feedback to adapt my product to become more attractive to my target audience and other readers, which would hopefully increase its success in sales.