Pricing Research

Pricing is an important aspect of a music magazine, as the publishers will want to try to make as much porift as possible on the magazines they publish. However, pricing strategies have to be carefully chosen so that the target audience is able to afford the magazine, and so that won't be put off by the price if it is too high.

 

 

Q - £3.70

NME - £2.20

Rolling Stone - £4.95

Vibe - £1.60

Billboard - £4.62 ($6.99)

 

 

As you can see from the above, the prices of the magazines vary from £1.60 to £4.95 per issue. Due to my magazine being a weekly edition, I will need to select my pricing carefully so that it is affordable and attracts a large customer base.

 

As you can see, Rolling Stone is the most expensive of the five priced at £4.95. This is because of the popularity of the magazine, and the audience that tends to buy the magazine, which are mainly middle class citizens who are interested in mainstream music, and who can afford £4.95 a month for an informative music magazine. This will therefore mean more profit should be genereated from each magazine that is sold.

Vibe is the cheapest of the five magazines priced at £1.60. This is a low price for such a magazine, that is published by-monthly, but it attracts its target audience well, who are mainly working class citizens who are interested in Hip-Hop, R&B and Rap. This mans that the audience attrtacted to the magainze should be able to afford to buy each issue, which means a high circulation, as there are a lot of Hip-Hop, R&B and Rap fans.

 

My music magazine will be influenced by Rolling Stone and Q for the quality of the magazine, but mostly Q because it is a professional looking magazine. Q has a similar target audience to mine which helps me to gather an idea of how much my magazine is going to cost. From the data above, it means that my magazine will probably cost at the lowest £1.50, and at the highest £3, but because it is a new magazine the price will probably be around £2 to try and compete with the bigger magazines such as Rolling Stone and Q. This should look attractive to my target audience, as it won't cost too much and exclude them from being able to buy my magazine.

 

 

Page Number Research

 

Q - Around 160 pages

NME - Around 60-70 pages

Rolling Stone - Around 80

Vibe - Around 60-80 pages

Billboard - Around 100 pages

 

With the reasearch I have gathered above, I now know how many pages a monthly, bi-wekkly and weekly magazine has. This is of value to me, as I have chosen to make my magazine a weekly magazine, which means that it will include around 60 pages or so, as this seems to be how many pages weekly magazines include.