Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

To find out about distribution for my magazine, I first took a look at the media institutions that are around who distribute the other main music magazines. After some research I found that NME is distributed by IPC whilst KERRANG! and Q are both distributed by the Bauer Music Group.

My magazine, however, will act as a competitor to these magazines (in particular NME and Kerrang!). I think that because of this, although they would have good knowledge of distributing music magazines, neither of these distributors

would be very willing to distribute mine as well as their current magazines as sales of their other magazines could go down as a result. Because of this, I decided to look for other distributors that have experience in distributing music magazines whilst not currently involved with a competitor to NME and Kerrang!.

The distributor 'Future PLC' at the moment distributes a range of magazines including a popular music magazine called 'Hammer'. Due to the fact that Hammer magazine is successful, the distributor must have effective distribution methods for a music magazine and will be able to distribute

mine in a similar way. 'Hammer', however is aimed at a slightly different target audience to mine, (Hammer is about metal rock) and so it will not be a competitor and the company would be likely to want to distribute my magazine.