Katie Dutton's Media Coursework Blog: Evaluation- What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

I believe that IPC Media Publications would distribute my media product, as they distribute one of my favourite music magazines NME, which is also one of the magazines closest to the magazine that I have produced myself. They distribute a lot of different magazines, from Homes and Gardens to Amateur Photographer and right back round to Golf Monthly. Although they distribute over 60 iconic brands onto our shelves, there is only one magazine which they decide to distribute, and that is NME. As there is a big ratio between the non-music and music magazines that they distribute, (and as there are hardly any music magazines published by them) - it is a perfect opportunity to get my magazine published as there is a prevalent gap in the market.

With IPC media targeting 2/3 of UK women and over 40% of UK men and with it’s fairly equal balance between the sexes reading their magazines I believe that my magazine ‘Amped Up!’ would slot nicely into its distributing sector. The target audience for my magazine is between the ages of 15 years to 25 years, classing that selection of people into the ‘young adult’ to ‘older adult’ age range, and because of this (and the wide variety between the different types of magazines IPC Media Publications produces) my magazine would fit nicely into the selection of magazines that IPC offer. Quoted on the IPC Media site, under the NME section, they state “NME.COM is the world's biggest standalone music site serving an intensely engaged audience of 16-24 year-olds.” From looking and analysing this statement it is clear that NME engage and overall target audience which is extremely similar to the group of people which I’m aiming for (give or take the year or so gap). This supports the idea that because NME caters for such a similar target audience, it would benefit the wide distribution and overall income of my media product, if it is proven that NME is the “longest published and most respected music weekly in the world” with over “1.1 million music fans every week”. With the obvious wide spread audience via its magazine and website, with such a massive following, it would only highly benefit my media product ‘Amped Up!’, and potentially gather the same kind of audience for my magazine. Also, as NME is a magazine targeted at a specific genre of music, which is very similar to mine, and it has built up such a massive following by avid music magazine readers, that if ‘Amped Up!’ was to ‘arrive onto the scene’ (as it were), that the pre-existing ‘fans/readers’ of NME would somehow latch onto my media product- knowing that they would enjoy it when they discover it is a music magazine similar to the one that they are previously a fan of.

I believe, with this in mind, IPC would be the best media distributor suited to my individual magazine. With the gap in the market for my magazine (knowing that they only distribute one music magazine from the 60+ that they distribute overall), and it being of a similar style to ‘Amped Up’ as well, that IPC Media Publications would be more inclined to distributing my magazine if they know that something similar that they work with is respected extremely highly from a vast number of physical and online fans. If IPC was to distribute my product, I believe that eventually the large amount of success from NME would only be mirrored in my magazine, if it carried on from the success of the music magazines that they distribute- in turn amounting to enormous profit, national/global success, a great mass following of music magazine readers, with a passion for the world of rock/alternative bands and the atmosphere encapsulated within that particular genre.