Institutional Research

Date Researched: Monday 9th November 2015

Woofah Magazine
Source: http://www.woofahmag.com

Woofah is an independently produced fanzine covering either dancehall, grime, dubstep, bashment, roots or all points in between. This means that this company is independently published and sells its copies from their own website. This company does publish new issues once in a while meaning that their business is doing well, however they don't publish magazines at a steady pace. This magazine would be a great magazine to feature my own because they mostly focus on electronic music meaning that our target audience would be quite similar, however it is highly unlikely because their selling is slightly unpredictable.

Rock Sound
Source: https://media.info/magazines/titles/rock-sound

The magazine which was firstly published on 10th March 1999. "Rock Sound" is published by Freeway Press Inc. Rock Sound is a British magazine heavily focused on rock and slightly electronic.The magazine aims at being more "underground" and less commercial, while also featuring more well-known acts such as artists and bands. I believe that this company will be interested in printing out my magazine because they had a dubstep issue featuring Skrillex and rock music is also quite similar to dub-step, my genre is dub-step, however my chosen sub-genre does not match heavy rock as much which could cause some problems with agreeing because it will likely bring the different kind of target audience.

Spin
Source: https://media.info/magazines/titles/spin       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(magazine)
http://www.ibtimes.com/memoriam-magazines-we-lost-2012-956388

This magazine was first published by Spin Media which is a digital publisher Bob Guccione Jr. that owns a number of pop culture websites meaning they publish artists and bands ranging from Katy Perry to Nine Inch Nails and Gorillaz . Their first issue was released on May 1985, however they do not produce any new issues since 2012. This company would be great to print out my magazine since they feature pop culture and dub-step in their magazines. However, they stopped because many magazine companies had closed their issues, due to the "digital age".
Spin mostly focuses on Pop Culture because it is the most popular music genre meaning it would get them more audience. Spin media also publishes different websites such as, Buzznet, Idolator, Stereogum, Vibe and The Frisky. These websites are mostly music blogs and news where people can share and view different kinds of information.

Rolling Stones
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stone    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jann_Wenner
http://www.rollingstone.com/

Their first issue was released on November 9th 1967 by a company called Wenner Media and LLC. 
Wenner Media is published by Jann Wenner who was focused mainly on pop culture, however this publisher also publishes other magazines that are not music orientated, such as a lifestyle magazine called Men's Journal which is focused on outdoor recreation, enviromental issues, health and fitness, outdoors and fitness, The reason why I believe Wenner Media publishes different magazine genres is because they want to appeal more to male audience, for example the original website for Rolling Stones looks like a news website rather than a website that shows their issues and features music bands. However, I believe that they will be interested in adding my magazine to their list of titles because they also feature music from any genre such as hip-hop, pop music, rock and of course, dub-step. They will more likely agree because my genre is a mix of pop and dub-step meaning it might bring them and me similar kind of target audience, additionally their target audience like fashion so they could appeal to my magazine as well.

How will this research affect my ideas?

I've found out that most magazines I've researched are not heavily focused of dub-step music, instead they are mostly about rock, pop and electronic music. This made me realize that there is a gap in the market meaning that there is no competition, however this might not be a good or a bad thing since dub-step is a completely new genre. Although, that could also mean that there isn't a high demand for a dub-step magazine which is why I chose to do a sub-genre of Chillstep because it has vocals and melody like pop music which is in higher demand. From my research, the best magazine that matches to my theme is Spin because it has a wide variety of music genres and it also featured bands such as Daft Punk and Moby which is electronic music. However, they stopped selling copies so my second best choice was Rolling Stones because they also feature different music varieties and they have very similar target audience.