Task 1 Generating ideas

I can tell that this is a niche project with a budget, the magazine seems to aimed at the most popular genres that originate from north London, such as Grime or jazz.

My initial reaction is that this will need to be a genre pacific magazine for two main reasons. Firstly the cost of running a Mixed Magazine and getting multiple interviews with artist from multiple genres is high as most pages will be a report/review and not an interview; a start up niche magazine will not have the funds to completion multi genre coverage. However this doesn't mean that reviews of performances at North London venues such as KOKO couldn't be done if the performance did fall out of the primary genre. Saying this is is with saying that a Mixed magazine would have a Larger audience and potential Readership as well as a higher amount of content to publish but a huge amount of competition.

Secondly as the market will be niche its important to target a gap in the market by focusing on a genre that is not only popular but doesn't have a focused magazine. However if done corectly then a small magazine could compete in a mainstream market.

This is why I would choose Grime, POP or a mixture of both.

Secondly grime, grime is a stable genre of music this is because it will all ways appeal to its audience and similar music has been stable for years. An example of this is N.W.A. Who made rap music back in the 80's and they still have a strong audience today with their first songs still being extremely popular, e.g. 'Express your Self' this shows that the genre of rap/grime not only has a loyal audience but also is sustainable and will be a smart long term investment. This would appeal to a younger audience as well as a middle aged audience with in the C1-E social class this is the largest population with in London.
Finally POP. The genre of pop is a Mainstream genre, this means it appeals to a large and diverse target group. Operating in a mainstream market has one major benefit and draw back as well as other factors. You have a very large market with loyal fan bases who could easily pick up a magazine if it featured only one major name as a tag line e.g. Katy Perry, Cold Play Adell , ect. this mean a high chance of large readership. However this also mean that you have many competitors such as Billboard or Vibe, who could easily stay smaller magazines out of buy them up.

Finally Mixed, a mixed magazine will appeal to both target market of grime and pop however it will not be as focused or detailed on either genre, this could lead possible readers to go to go to other magazines who can better fit there needs on a more detailed level.
In conclusioni believe that both pop and mixed are great ideas however they are both very hostile environments for a new magazine as their are manny other magazines to compete with that have a much higher budget and much stronger connections that would crush a new magazine such as "Vibe" or "Q." As well as this Pop is not the best representation of the North London Music Scene so it would not be worth producing a Pop or Mixed magazine as it would not appeal to the North London Market.

This is why I believe that grime Would be the smartest choice, as it counters all the negative points about Pop and Mixed. There are no major or Niche magazines that only focuses on Grime and the culture surrounding it, this mean a small magazine will thrive as there will be little to none competition to try flush it out. As well this grime is a genre that is concurrently growing in popularity, so a Magazine focusing on grime could grow with it and become a much larger player in the music scene. However by choosing grime you would need to be willing to tackle controversial topics which may cause some back lash, but I don't think this is a huge problem as if done maturely then it shouldn't cause any issues.

Mood Bord For Pop