Evaluation: Who would be the audience for your media product?

During our lessons we were told about SAGEL, an abbreviation of the terms Social group, Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Lifestyle. I will use these to explain the ideal target audience for my magazine.

Social group

This section refers to the social class of the readers. Generally, rock music magazines would be read by middle and working class youths, as these groups are where the genre normally gains fans and bands originate from.

Age

Generally speaking, magazines in my genre are read by younger readers, aged between 15-30. I would target this age range as I know they buy magazines of this genre and are fans of the music inside

Gender

After reading the NRS (National Readership Survey) and focusing on rock music magazines I discovered that there is a much larger number of males who buy this type of magazine than there is females. Using this information I would focus my magazine more on young males aged between 15-30.

Ethnicity

Although the roots of rock music can be traced to originate in black music, there is very little representation of black people in the modern incarnation of rock music. Due to this there is likely to be very few front covers or interviews with a black musician in a rock magazine. This would probably also affect my audience as there would probably also be not as many fans of the genre who are of an ethnic minority, especially since, when you link this to social groups there is a trend where ethnic minorities live in more built up, urban areas where the social class is generally lower (working + lower classes). In these areas music such as Hip-Hop, RnB and Drum and Bass would be more prevalent as the main genre, so this would mean that I would have a smaller ethnic audience than some other magazine types, such as RnB, would have.

Lifestyle

This would encompass a large group of areas and is difficult to specify, but the features that set the lifestyle of people who are fans of this genre apart from others is probably their passion for the music they listen to. Most fans of rock music are very keen to go to gigs, and are more often than not seen wearing merchandise of their favourite bands. Many also choose to have tattoos, and they are far more prevalent in rock culture than any other music culture.

Ideal Audience

From what I’ve shown here, my ideal audience is young, middle/working class, white males, who gravitate towards a similar lifestyle to the one shown. To this extent, I would use these people as examples of a member of my ideal audience: