5. What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why?

A media institution is defined as a company that makes and distributes media products, specifically for my chosen media product, magazines. This can be undertaken using various methods for example, marketing or the actual production.

On my previous blog spot I briefly spoke about two different magazine publishing companies, Bauer and Time Inc. Both are arguably the biggest publishers in the industry, so which one would I choose to print my magazine? Bauer have produced such magazines like "Q" and "Kerrang" whereas Time Inc. produce less music magazines however are still responsible for the production of "NME". My target audience is a niche audience because grime is seen as an underground genre of music that only a select group of individuals can listen to, although that is changing and grime is becoming more and more globalised. Bauer publishes a range of music magazines all varied with genres, I feel as if my magazine would add to that range however Bauer are known to publish to mass audiences and they rarely deal with smaller scale magazines like mine would be. On the other hand Time Inc. are known for taking chances on lesser known publications and media products, the biggest and most inspiring to me would be the hip hop magazine "Vibe", founded by Quincy Jones in 1993 (see History of Vibe post for more detail). At the moment the market is over saturated with too many mainstream or "pop" magazines in my opinion, in fairness "pop" stands for popular so everyone is just printing what's popular, however I see there to be a current gap in the market for which my genre of magazine can fill, there are so many fans of grime out there today that would love to read the content my magazine has to offer. As culture has taught us in the past, sometimes its the least popular things at that time that turn into the most popular later on. I think my product will satisfy though who are fed up of mainstream and trendy magazines and offer a fresh outlook and style we so desperately need.

I took a lot of inspiration from "Vibe" and see them as a similar style of magazine to mine, for this reason I would favour Time Inc. as a publishing company that I would trust to produce my product, they've had many successful prints in the past and present and I believe they would take my magazine to the top.