Research on UK Magazine Industry...

 1. How healthy do you consider the UK magazine industry at the moment? Have there been any recent trends in sales figures?

The impact on the UK magazine industry has collapsed greatly in the retailing of magazines which has caused the UK magazine industry to be unhealthy. Furthermore, looking at the table above, the magazines presented have made an huge impact on the income in the years 2008-09. Another factor that is affecting the sales of magazines is technology. Technology is improving as people are now using the Internet to read the magazines online and applications for mobile phones are now releasing so magazines can be read on mobile phones as well as the Internet. The sales figures may be decreasing as the magazines are aimed at a more niche market. For example, NME and Kerrang! are two magazines that used to be very popular but unfortunately these two have decreased in sales because many people now use the Internet to read magazines online as I mentioned above.

2. Do you foresee any problems in creating a new music magazine for the UK market?  

The problems that I can foresee is that magazines are under pressure from positions both online and offline. If I was to create an original magazine and this was to be published now in the UK, it would clearly be a very reasonable and enticing market  due to the impact on magazine sales. When creating new magazines it must be enticing to a wider audience as you must think about their interests as well as being competitive. Incidentally, Magazines have become more expensive to launch and the cost of attraction and keeping subscribers has increased. In an article on The Economist website mentions that "America and Europe magazine publishers have a common lament: total circulation is either flat or declining slightly as people devote more time to the internet, and an ever greater share of advertising spending is going online." Creating original magazines must include unique concepts to differ from existing magazines. In addition, there are many music magazines so it is difficult to find the gap in the market as Internet is the new trend to locating information which is why sales are decreasing by a downfall.