Question 3

What kind of Media institution might distribute your product and why?

Bauer is a publisher that already owns Q, Mojo, both of my style models, and Kerrang! Kerrang! is a rock magazine that shares many similarities to my own, in terms of genre and some aspects of house style. Due to the success of these two magazines, both of which share my genre of music, i would feel confident in Bauer distributing my magazine.While they are a privately owned company, Bauer own all of the aforementioned magazines as well as many more across the world, although they do have a headquarters in Hamburg,Germany. A advantage of picking Bauer media over other publishers is that they already have had prior experience with music magazines, especially magazines of my genre, and they would be able to attract my target audience as they have proven to be able to do so with several other brands.

 They have shown to be able to adapt the brand over to different media platforms, for example, Q magazine now have success in radio and on digital platforms with websites and social media. Under the supervision of Bauer, my music magazine would be able to reach a much wider audience than it would from just print sales. However, the issue with using Bauer as a publisher is that they already own magazines that are similar to mine,including my style models and there wouldn't really be a gap in the target market for my magazine. This would limit the interest my target market and audience would have in my magazine, and this would be further decreased if Bauer put little funding and marketing behind my magazine in comparison to another of its brands like Q or Mojo.

Furthermore, i have looked at alternate publishers for my magazine, but the primary one i considered was Haymarket Media. These are a privately owned publisher based in the UK, however they have recently began expanding overseas and now have headquarters in countries like the USA, Germany,India and Hong Kong. This would help to appeal to a worldwide market and not just my target audience in the Uk, but fans of the genre across the world. Additionally, they operate over different media platforms and not just with magazines, and the companies use of these different media platforms would be beneficial in marketing over a larger audience than what is normally possible.

On the other hand, the publisher has had little experience with music magazines of my genre and target audience, which therefore gives doubts about their ability to market this correctly to the target audience. They would not know the correct sort of advertising for this, and they may not know crucial marketing knowledge, including where to put the magazines in the store, and what sort of features in my magazine they wish to market at my target audience.

Another potential publisher that i have looked at is Time Inc, who are a publisher that have a headquarters in the UK. They recently changed their name to Time Inc from IPC media, and they clearly have a successful history with publishing and distributing magazines, with their current sales of 350 million issues a year over their magazine subsidiaries They have published such magazines as NME, and i feel that they would be a good choice for marketing my magazine to a more mainstream audience, as they don't really have anything currently that shares my genre and target market. This means that they are able to put more attention into my magazine than Bauer would, as it does not have several other brands with a similar target market. The popularity and success of Time inc means that they are also going to be suitable for a large financial backing, again which i contrasted to how i feel Bauer would back my magazine.

Looking at the pros and cons of each individual publisher, both in terms of their popularity in terms of both sales and marketing, and their general suitability for my magazine, i can conclude that Time Inc would be the ideal publisher and distributer for my magazine. This comes down to a number of factors, however i believe that it is the mainstream popularity and a gap in the lineup of brands they own for my magazine which were the contributing factors in my decision.