Evaluation Question 3

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When considering what media institution might distribute my product and why, it is important to understand the genre and target audience of my product. My magazine is of a very niche and by majority unheard of genre (Synthwave/Retrowave). This means that any listener base would be notably small and specific, ruling out the magazine as a particularly wise investment in terms of moneymaking for a large publishing company such as Bauer Media, Dennis Publishing or Times Inc. Media (IPC Media).

While the genre does have potential to continue advancing in popularity, EXOSKELETON is still better suited to a small, independent publisher.

The Synthwave genre has never had it's own dedicated magazine before, making this magazine highly experimental and a risk to actually invest in and publish. This further deems it unsuitable for large-scale publishing by a popular publisher like those mentioned above.

When looking at other, similar small-time music magazines of similar genres such as Synth and Dubstep (which are both far more popular than synthwave), the Dubstep / Drum & Bass magazine 'Kmag' is published by a small independent company called 'Phoenix Publishing' and the experimental UK music magazine 'The Wire' actually has it's own independent publishing company, making it a self-publishing conglomerate that is vertically integrated. This suggests that the magazine had trouble finding publishing when it was founded in the 80s, likely due to the lack of independent publishers.

Therefore, given this research it is safe to say that it is highly unlikely that a large-scale publishing company would take on EXOSKELETON Magazine due to it's small if not negligible profits and fairly high chance of failing commercially. In fact, a small, independent publishing company such as Phoenix Publishing should publish my magazine, and in fact, given the genre's steady climb in popularity, if the magazine turned out to be a success, it could possibly be a wise choice for the magazine to vertically integrate and self-publish.