Evaluation: Institutions
What kind of Media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I believe that my music magazine would be well suited to the Condé Nast publishing company. This is because they are a well established company with a very large audience of 164 million consumers. Their magazines are always of the highest quality as they distribute their wares to the upper classes of society. I think that my Magazine would be well suited to Condé Nast because of their wide range of experience in producing fashion magazines such as Vogue and GQ. However, it had come to may attention during my research that this particular publication firm does not produce any magazines solely for music- this is where my magazine would come in. It is of high quality and would bring in a younger audience at 15-19 years olds which would rejuvenate their reader’s average age of 34. There would also be no worry about taking the readers away from other published magazines either because of the specific age differences which would only serve to boost annual sales. Furthermore my magazine includes all of the conventions that they look for in a magazine: class, quality, fashion and femininity. However, there are both pros and cons to having my magazine published by such a big corporation. Advantages would be that they have the financial stability to aid the start up of the magazine including advertisement and employers; another would be the massive audience range they already have which know the level of quality Condé Nast provide and so might read my magazine to try it out. On the other hand because it is such an influential company any features that they did not like, for example the masthead, they would be able to take control of editing rights as they essentially fund the magazine. However, for the quality and reader audience available it might be worth the editorial risk.
Formerly IPC Media, Time Inc. was part of the Suffragette movement during WW2 and the Digital revolution, rising to represent over 30% of the magazine market. I believe that Time Inc. would publish my magazine as well because of their typical style. The majority of their magazines are focused on females but around 20-30 years of age. This would leave a niche market for my own magazine which mostly caters for females as well but also the occasional male. By doing this it would not take any readers away from existing magazines but would instead add to their existing circulation number. On concern I would have about siding with Time Inc. is that they already publish NME which is on of the most popular music magazines to date. This could either lead to my music magazine being rejected because of the current one or it being accepted because it is of a different genre and with a different target audience.