Audience Expectations of Music Magazines

For every type of magazine there will be set audience expectations. Through research and planning the magazine editors will know who their target audience is and what sort of things they expect to find inside, every magazine is different. For example, magazines aimed at younger audiences such as music magazine 'Top of the Pops' have features inside that they know younger females with enjoy such as a section where people from home write in and state their most embarrassing moments. Therefore, they will look at what their target audience will enjoy reading the most and try and feature all of these things within an issue.

If the target audience is for 16-30 years olds then they will know that they are more than likely interested in finding out more about an artists personal affairs rather than a magazine based solely on their music career, this supports Dyers star theory. Furthermore, if the target audience again was a younger generation then the artists that are shown inside would be of young age.

Consequently, magazines such as 'Rolling Stone' includes politics and pop culture because they know that their target audience isn't young and therefore they have an intellectual side to it.

Audiences might expect to find more out about artists besides tour dates and their music careers, they like to get to know them on a more personal level. This refers to Bulmer and Katz Uses and Gratification's theory where readers like to feel as though they have some kind of connection with the artist to escape their normal lives.

I produced a spider diagram to show what some audiences will expect from their music magazine, this will help when planning my own magazine because I will be able to pick out what features to include depending on my chosen audience.