Music Magazine Focus Group

Music Magazine Focus Group

I created and interviewed a focus group of Year 13 students to attain information on their taste in music, and to help develop my own magazine.

In response to the question “Should a magazine be targeted to a certain genre?” the consensus was yes.  If could focus on a small group of genres, but if it engaged too many it would have to either “too vague or as big as a book”. This response helped me decide that my music magazine will focus primarily on electronic, dubstep, rock, and country music; omitting metal, pop, classical, punk, and other such genres. Admittedly an odd combination that I plan to package as “new wave” or “chill” or something along the lines of a style rather than genre.

When asked; “ What is your favourite genre of music?” there were a wide variety of answers, from reggae to indie. Very little mention of the genres I myself prefer and plan to write about, but it was clear from their responses that they wanted at least a small variety, not a genre-specific magazine. This helped me to decide not to limit my genres but combine them in a new style, which is still a work in progress. Also, realising that many genres that will not feature were brought up in the discussion gave me the idea of a remix feature of the magazine; The remix feature will have remixes of songs from other genres so as not to isolate the magazine from other sects of the music industry.

Finally, when asked “Who is your favourite music artist?” the most talented and popular of their respective genres were all mentioned; Bob Marley for Reggae, Arctic Monkeys for Rock, The 1975 for Indie, Skrillex for dubstep, etc. These answers helped me realise that my magazine should feature the famous of my chosen genres as well as the talented, the up-and-coming and so forth in order to appeal to the right people and introduce them to similar music.