Research!
It is important when creating a magazine that you make sure you are designing it for the right targeted audience, if you do not it will not be a successful magazine. This is why you should conduct research into where there are gaps in the market for a different type of media product, offering something different, challenging media conventions.
From my own personal experience as being a youth I noticed that a lot of music comes from an indie culture, therefore I thought that this is something popular creating a magazine based on this genre would be perfect, as it would target a lot of the younger generation. However I wanted to challenge some media conventions with my media product, therefore I wanted to search the internet to see if there was a gap in the market for me to produce a completely indie genre music magazine.
I searched google for indie music magazines this is the result I found: 
The second result down was a website for a magazine called ‘Crud’ this was a magazine offering the genre of indie music and alternative music.
When I searched the website it was not very informative, and did not give me a lot of information on the genre of music it was claiming to represent.
This website was quite informative and gave information of gigs and festivals, this is something that youths would be interested in. from looking at this website I would suggest that it would be targeted at 16-19 year olds, this is the target audience I would like to look into for my own music magazine.
Other magazines such as NME also have aspects of indie music involved in them, however I did not find one magazine that was purely based on indie genre. Therefore I feel that there is a gap in the market for this type of magazine, with the target audience of 16-19 year olds.
A lot of the charts are filled with indie music such as, Nero, Adele, Mumford and Sons, Example etc. therefore this means that I wide audience listen to this music on a daily basis, giving me a huge target audience to work with. Also a lot of festivals headline a lot of indie acts, for example, IOW 2011 is headlining Kings of Leon and tickets for this festival sold out within a matter of a couple of days, showing that this is a popular genre.
The title of the magazine is the main focus point of any music magazine, as this is the first thing that you will see when looking at the page. This means it is important that it captures the audiences eye. My idea for the title is dropbeats, the reason I have chosen this name is because it is relevant to music, and I think that this name is memorable. It has the connotation that beats are dropping from the pages of my magazine creating the music my audience is reading about.
A good buzz word or phrase is the best way to illustrate that your magazine is better than its main competitors. For example the buzz phrase for Q magazine is ‘Britain’s Biggest Music Magazine’ this line conveys to its audience that this magazine is the best in the country so therefore why go anywhere else for a music magazine when you can have the best. This buzz phrase used alliteration to allure its audience. I think that for my own music magazine I will use the same idea to suggest that my magazine is the best indie music magazine in Britain.
The main image is the biggest focus of the whole magazine, so you would expect to have an image that will capture the audiences eye as well as relating to the genre and style of the magazine. For my own media product I would like to have either a band or an artist to be my main image, the image will have to make full eye contact with the target readers, grabbing there attention and involving them in the magazine. I want to have an image that is fun, as I think this will help with the tone and genre of my magazine.
For my colour scheme I would like colours that you can relate to the genre, which would be a mixture of dark and bright tones, so black would be a good colour, but to contrast red would stand out.
As my target audience is within the teenager generation I feel that a good reasonable price would service. As in the current government state, not all teens can get jobs and earn money; therefore if this magazine were priced too high, it would not be affordable of accessible.
I have noticed that most successful music magazines such as Kerrang, Q, NME etc are released every month, however I feel that the music business is too large to just cover over month periods of time therefore I would like my magazine to be produced fortnightly, giving my target audience all the information they need about the indie music that is happening now, covering the current.
