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

There are four main companies that form the oligopoly. These are Bauer Media, IPC Media, The National Magazine Company and Conde Nast.

Bauer Media is a large German publishing company based in Hamburg, which operates in 15 countries worldwide, publishing over 282 magazines. This company is responsible for the publishing of many magazines, including Take a Break, Empire and Kerrang. Therefore, I will not be using Bauer Media to publish my magazine, as they are already publishing Kerrang magazine, which is aimed at a similar target audience to mine, meaning my magazine would have more competition.

IPC is one of the largest publishing companies, publishing a huge variety of magazines from men’s interest, fashion, TV guides, music and so on. They also publish NME; therefore I will not be using IPC to publish my magazine, for similar reasons to why I won’t use Bauer Media. NME was my main inspiration when creating my magazine; therefore I have given my magazine a number of similar features to NME. Meaning IPC would not gain anything by publishing my magazine, as it is too similar to NME.

The National Magazine Company also contributes to making up the oligopoly. This company publishes magazines such as Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Good House Keeping and so on. They appeal to over 14.9 million adults every year, as they publish over 20 magazines in the UK alone.
The last company that makes up the oligopoly is Conde Naste. They are a worldwide publishing company, responsible for publishing some of the most successful lifestyle magazines. They are also well known for their contribution to the fashion magazine industry, publishing magazines such as Vogue.

Therefore, I have decided I am going to use The National Magazine Company to help distribute my magazine. This is because I feel they will benefit from having a magazine of my sort within their company, as they do not currently publish any other indie/rock magazines with my target audience, therefore I will be giving making the variety of magazines they publish larger. It also means I will not have any strong competition within their company as my magazine will be the only main indie/rock genre magazine in the market.