Q Magazine Analysis

General

Q magazine is produced by Bauer Publishing Ltd. (http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/) This magazine was originally going to be called 'Cue' but they changed it as they thought readers would confuse it with a snooker magazine.

Q magazine is mainly aimed at the older generation as it is for the more mature adult who enjoys music. I can tell this as the majority on the people on front of Q magazine are well established artists such as Take That, U2 and The Beatles. Additionally the magazine include segments on sports, comedy, film and even politics. While researching the magazine I could not find any statics showing the average reader age, however Bauer media do say that the ideal Q magazine will be: "Open minded experience seekers, the Q audience don’t define themselves by the music they listen to. Music is an important passion, but their love of music will never be to the detriment of their other passions, such as film, sport and comedy".The adverts in Q magazine mainly appeal to the older male reader as they include; male perfume, hi tech phones, games for consoles and mens clothing.

Q magazine costs £3.99 and is published monthly. This seems expensive for a magazine but there is a lot of content inside, the magazine is only published monthly whereas other magazines are usually weekly which will cost you around £2.00-£3.00 which is easily around £8.00-£12.00 a month. Q's circulation was around 89,450 (January 2010) which is significantly higer than NME magazine.

Here is Q's circulation and readership figures. It shows that circulation has been going down over the years and that readership has just about stayed the same. (click picture to enlarge!)To find out advertising streams for Q magazine you had to ring the advertisers number for Q, they did not offer a media pack online. However I can tell how much of the magazine is advertising. The magazine has 162 pages 40 of these pages are adverts, this is around 24% (1/4 of the magazine) The adverts in this magazine tell us that it is mainly aimed at the male reader.