Researching the market place

I have decided to conduct research into existing music magazines that are based on pop/rock and quite commercial. This is due to the fact that I want my intended magazine to revolve around these genres; there is high interest within the public and pop and rock artists always seem to make up about 90% of the charts. Some magazines that may be competition to my own creation will include: Billboard, NME, Q Magazine, Rolling Stone and to a lesser extent rocksound, amongst a number of others. The prices of the magazines all seem to be relevently equal. An issue of NME published on 5 November 2011 costs £2.40. Issue 153 of Rocksound is quite a lot higher at £3.99. Q magazine ranges its prices at around £3.90 at retailers in the UK. Depending on which publisher, the magazines are issued weekly, biweekly (once every fortnight) or monthly. However, all are frequently published. Billboard opts to publish it's magazine every week to its loyal and large fanbase. Q magazine publishes it's magazine at a larger interval, monthly. Q magazine tends to have each issue at a size of about 180 pages, but it can reach up to over 200 pages. Due to Billboard's much more frequent publication, it has about 53 pages per publication. The features of these magazine include upcoming and new artists, aswell as well established ones. Some may include competitions and prizes, aswell as free incentives. Billboard has the additional feature of the billboard's official albums and singles chart, among others.

Here are a list of websites to the magazines I have been researching.

http://www.nme.com/magazine
http://www.qthemusic.com/
http://www.billboard.com/
http://www.rollingstone.com/