What kind of media institution might distribute

your media product and why?

Bauer Media

O Bauer Media Group is a multinational media company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany which operates in 16 countries worldwide.

O Since the company was founded in 1875, it sells many successful magazines, and is a good distribution for my magazine.

O It is a pro because it is a popular distribution with a good history, and therefore my magazine will have a good platform to sell nationally or worldwide.

O It’s also a con because it sells similar magazines, which means that it may not stand out from the crowd so much, especially from a magazine like Q, which is a well-known and established magazine, and Kerrang, which has a very similar target audience

Worldwide circulation of Bauer Media Group's magazine titles amounts to 38 million magazines a week, which has its pros and cons for my magazine.

O This makes them reliable as it means that they distribute Kerrang to locations where they have been made successful, as they would do with ‘Unplugged’.

O On the contrary, the fact that they are similar music magazines in terms of genre specifics highlights a key question of whether the magazine company would take mine so seriously.

They also publish Kerrang! Magazine, a rock magazine founded in 2004 and Q magazine, founded as ‘Cue’ in 1986, both experienced companies.However, with Kerrang magazine showing more modern aesthetics, which are relatively similar to my ‘Unplugged’ magazine, it means that Bauer already sell other music magazines, which again, there are pros and cons:

O There is a link on the Bauer media website that offers subscription packs.

O As an advertisement, you can see that the publication is a decent promoter with a good reputation, asides from an incident in 2010.

O A selection of magazine that Bauer Media publish, something I have to bear in mind.

O For instance, they sell Mojo, Kerrang, Q, and the hits- all music related media.

O Q started out as a music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.

O Originally it was to be called Cue (named after the act of cueing a record to play), but the name was changed so that it wouldn't be mistaken for a snooker magazine.

O Modelled after Rolling Stone, Q was first published in 1986, setting itself apart from much of the other music press with monthly production and higher standards of photography and printing, with an emphasis on style, which is what I’ve tried to create with my own magazine.

O My magazine is similar as it is a monthly magazine and a key feature with my aesthetics is that it’s a stylish magazine, with a colour scheme that looks good on the magazine shelf.

O I can tell that Bauer Media with their good sense of publication style that the magazine will look its best.

O On their website, they also offer a magazine subscription link, so that if the audience wasn’t appealed to my magazines subscription offer, there is also the option to subscribe to several of the companies magazines.

IPC MediaO IPC Media Ltd (formerly International Publishing

Corporation) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Inc.

O It is also a consumer magazine and digital publisher in the United Kingdom, with a large portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year, a similarly successful magazine to Bauer Media, however they are a lot more national (UK) than worldwide, which means that if I used IPC media, that it would be a more nationally based magazine.

O The pros of this magazine distributor is that there aren’t any music magazines that are similar to mine, and therefore would be distributed more uniquely

O Selections of magazines that IPC Media publish. Unlike Bauer Media, who deal with everything from radios to websites to magazines.

O IPC Media mainly deal with magazines which is a big pro, as they are more experienced and specific to one sort of distribution.

O IPC Media was founded in 1958 and they are responsible for the publishing of NME, the longest running music magazine in the world, which started 6 years earlier in 1952.

O This institution is a much bigger and more respected company because of this, however my magazine is a modern magazine, so whether this is right for my magazine to be associated with is a big question.

O Another thing that I noticed is that IPC media don’t sell many magazines within my target audience, so whilst IPC Media are a well-known and founded magazine, they appeal much more to the older audiences, which isn’t right for my magazine at all.

O In conclusion, I will probably use Bauer magazine as opposed to IPC because it is a much bigger company, plus IPC deals with more gossip magazines, as opposed to music magazines, that Bauer Media do.

O Bauer are also, upon research seen to be a lot more modern and I prefer their choice of magazines, as opposed to IPC, whose magazines are mainly appealed to middle aged adults, for instance, “country life”, “ideal home” and “goodtoknow”.