Magazine Popularity Research

In order to gain some background knowledge about the best selling, and therefore the most successful existing music magazines today, I have used the internet to find some news articles about the rise and fall in circulation figures this year for music magazines. Here is some of the information that I found -

Mojo overtakes Q as top-selling music magazine

Bauer monthly overtakes sister title, as weeklies NME and Kerrang! slide more than 20% year on year

Mojo has overtaken its sister title Q to become the biggest-circulation paid-for music magazine, while there were big drops for music titles New Musical Express, Kerrang! and Metal Hammer in the latest circulation figures out today.

Bauer Media's classic rock magazine Mojo had an average monthly circulation of 98,484 in the second half of last year, down 2% year on year but up 0.8% on the previous six months. It overtook fellow Bauer title Q, which fell 8% year on year and 5.4% on the first half of the year to 94,811.

IPC Media's Uncut held onto third place among the paid-for rock music titles, despite a 13.3% fall year on year to 75,518. It was ahead of Classic Rock, which was up 1.5% year on year and 1.3% on the first half of 2009 to 71,242. But there were big year on year drops for the other titles in the rock music sector. Future Publishing's Metal Hammer was down 16.9% year on year and 9.2% on the previous six months to 41,777.

It was just ahead of Bauer's rock title Kerrang!, which tumbled 21.3% year on year and 4.9% on the first half of 2009 to 41,125, while IPC's NME fell 20.6% year on year, and 6% on the previous six months, to 38,486.

This article shows me that in 2010, the most successful paid-for music magazine was Mojo, which is a magazine devoted to the genre of 'Classic Rock'. This indicates that all ages who are fans of the genre occasionally or regularly buy this magazine, with an average monthly circulation of 98,484. Q Magazine, the sister to Mojo magazine, has shown a drop in circulation, and this product focuses on the genre of Modern Music, giving reviews of new albums and such like. As this popular magazine's circulation rates are falling, I feel that I could create a magazine of a similar genre, in order to help boost the popularity of this music genre magazine. Based on this genre, NME is also a good example of a successful magazine which I can refer to.