Demographics

Demographics are characteristics which can be measured of media consumers such as age, gender, race, education, income level, and interests. A business's target demographic captures a group of people at which their products/services are aimed.

 It is important to understand demographics when it comes to music magazine consumption as it needs to be aimed at a particular demographic in order to sell any copies of the magazine. People who are part of quite a scientific profession such as medicine are more likely to buy a New Scientist magazine or an issue of The Lancet than OK Magazine. Or if someone was an estate agent they are more likely to buy an issue of Property Drum than a copy of BBC Top Gear. However a person’s hobbies and interests can turn someone in a different direction when it comes to their choice of magazine. For example, if someone was interested in Golf they may buy Today’s Golfer. However, someone who liked Golf would be expected to be come from the Upper Middle Class or Middle Class demographic as it is seen as a wealthy and sophisticated person’s sport. Therefore, this would affect the price of the magazine since the editors of the magazine would expect their readers to have a large disposable income. Someone of Middle Class or Lower Middle Class is more likely to buy an issue of Empire magazine as it costs £3.99 an issue, people of this particular demographic will have higher disposable income and would be more likely to spend it on a magazine within this particular price range. Whereas someone of working class is more likely to spend around £2 for an issue of a particular magazine since they will have lower disposable income.

Demographics may affect the consumption of my magazine, since if I aimed the magazine at a particular demographic,  including things that a group of certain people may be interested in and gave it a price which someone from this particular group couldn’t afford, then no-one would buy the magazine. Kerrang magazine, which I am going to base my own magazine on is aimed at mainly students either in full time education or who have low income jobs, this is reflected in the price per issue which is £2.20. The demographic which I am going to aim my magazine at will be students who come from all sorts of backgrounds, particularly teenagers who are more in to music than adults are. Students who go to university will have most probably come from the A B or C1 demographic, but school children will have come from the full range of demographics, this makes it hard to say which demographic I am aiming the magazine at. This is why, when producing my magazine I need to keep the price to around £2 since students from all backgrounds will not have a high disposable income and would be less likely to spend over £4 on a magazine. The issues will be weekly like Kerrang and will include stories on what many people’s favourite bands are getting up to, as well as newcoming bands. Competition advertisements will give readers the chance to win tickets to see a particular band at a gig, or to win backstage passes to meet that band, or even to win band merchandise. The magazine will be sold in newsagents and chain stores such as WHSmiths since students will be looking in these shops to buy magazines. It will have around 100 pages so readers can flick through the stories and features that they are interested in and it will be fairly easy reading for them as well.