Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Target Research
In the target audience, most of the demographic will be in full time education, further education at either 6th form/college or at university or working. I found this when researching into target audience in other tasks. My music video is both going to be filmed and produced in the United Kingdom, meaning it would be ideally appeal to a UK audience.
I plan to aim the music video at a predominantly male audience, between the ages of 16-25. In the video, I have used the genre conventions of skateboarding, the ‘cool’ male image, along with live performance to appeal to the genre. The target audiences aspirations and interests vary due to their age and gender. They like a diverse range of media because of the wide range of references that I have collected while researching target audiences. These include social networking sites such at Facebook to keep in contact with friends, magazines such as NME and Q to keep up-to-date with the latest news on the music industry and using television programmes (MTV, The Hits and TMF) to keep up to date with the latest music news. Similar artists that would appeal the same audience as the Blighters would be Hockey, Good Shoes and The Maccabees. These bands are similar to Blighters in their style of music, dress sense and how they appeal to the audience.
I have found out that our band, The Blighters, have a target audience around 16-25. This is because they are in the Indie genre, which is big at the moment with this demographic. Indie/rock was two of the most popular when I asked what genres of music the focus group preferred. From my research, I have found out that the 16-25 demographic like to use the internet and radio predominantly to find out about new music and band. I asked my focus group how they found about new bands and if they used band and music websites. My responses suggested that official band websites or their MySpace site were popular with my target audience.
Thanks to this information, we would promote our band through the internet on sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Furthermore, we would want to get the material out to radio stations to further increase our fane base. This would start with local and small radio stations around Norfolk, helping to improve the local audience of the band. If this goes well, then we would look to get the bands material on a national scale. My audience research results suggest that this would be the most successful way to promote The Blighters successfully.
I am going to use this information in the production of my music video for the Blighters, with their song ‘Boys in Motion’. Thanks to this information that I have gathered, I can create a video that can relate to the correct demographic, 16-25. Furthermore, the research I have collected can be used when promoting the band through the advert I produce. I have found out how the target audience consume media and how they found about new music.
I believe I could have made this method better by asking more people to complete this questionnaire. This would have giving me a large depth of answers and responses. Another way that I could have collected more detailed results would have been to ask more searching questions. Finally, next time I would evaluate the difference between male and female responses to see if the Blighters appealed to them similarly.
I plan to aim the music video at a predominantly male audience, between the ages of 16-25. In the video, I have used the genre conventions of skateboarding, the ‘cool’ male image, along with live performance to appeal to the genre. The target audiences aspirations and interests vary due to their age and gender. They like a diverse range of media because of the wide range of references that I have collected while researching target audiences. These include social networking sites such at Facebook to keep in contact with friends, magazines such as NME and Q to keep up-to-date with the latest news on the music industry and using television programmes (MTV, The Hits and TMF) to keep up to date with the latest music news. Similar artists that would appeal the same audience as the Blighters would be Hockey, Good Shoes and The Maccabees. These bands are similar to Blighters in their style of music, dress sense and how they appeal to the audience.
I have found out that our band, The Blighters, have a target audience around 16-25. This is because they are in the Indie genre, which is big at the moment with this demographic. Indie/rock was two of the most popular when I asked what genres of music the focus group preferred. From my research, I have found out that the 16-25 demographic like to use the internet and radio predominantly to find out about new music and band. I asked my focus group how they found about new bands and if they used band and music websites. My responses suggested that official band websites or their MySpace site were popular with my target audience.
Thanks to this information, we would promote our band through the internet on sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Furthermore, we would want to get the material out to radio stations to further increase our fane base. This would start with local and small radio stations around Norfolk, helping to improve the local audience of the band. If this goes well, then we would look to get the bands material on a national scale. My audience research results suggest that this would be the most successful way to promote The Blighters successfully.
I am going to use this information in the production of my music video for the Blighters, with their song ‘Boys in Motion’. Thanks to this information that I have gathered, I can create a video that can relate to the correct demographic, 16-25. Furthermore, the research I have collected can be used when promoting the band through the advert I produce. I have found out how the target audience consume media and how they found about new music.
I believe I could have made this method better by asking more people to complete this questionnaire. This would have giving me a large depth of answers and responses. Another way that I could have collected more detailed results would have been to ask more searching questions. Finally, next time I would evaluate the difference between male and female responses to see if the Blighters appealed to them similarly.
Media Audience Research Questionnaire
Media Audience Research Questionnaire
I have selected a small group of participants to complete my questionnaire on how people consume and find out about new bands. In my focus group, there are 6 male and 4 female. All questionnaires were filled out through the social networking site Facebook. The returned questionnaires were filled out by friends of mine who have an account on Facebook. These results were collected in October 2009. The purpose of these results were to find out how my target audience like to listen to music and how they purchase music products, whether that may through the internet or thanks to high street shops. Furthermore, I wanted to find out how the focus group found out about new music and bands. This research will also help me when producing my media music video for year 13. Furthermore, the information collected from the questionnaires will help when promoting the band in magazines, over the internet and on television.
Firstly, I wanted to find out about their age group and occupation. The majority of the focus group was in the age bracket 16-20, with 2 of my audience in the age group of 21-25. 8 of my audience were in some kind of educational (6th form, college or university), while I had two replies for employment.
Above is the first questionnaire about their musical tastes. This graph shows their replies to which genres of music they enjoyed to listen to. They could have picked up to 4 different genres for this question. From this graph, I can see that Rock is a popular genre within my focus group. Furthermore, indie (the genre that my unsigned band for my music video) is quite popular, with 4 votes from the replies. This graph shows that the rock/indie culture and drum ‘n’ bass genres are big hits with the 16-25 age group. This was expected as these genres and sub-genres target an audience similar to that of my questionnaire.. This is shown when they play gigs and how buys they music tracks. Below is an example of this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2007/aug/26/1?picture=330634571
This picture was taken at Reading festival in 2007, when British Indie band Bloc Party played. The picture shows that most of the crowd are below 30, as the target audience suggests, and have a variety of males and females watching. This evidence shows that the results I have collected are a true representation of the target audience for the most popular genres in my focus group.
Here is the next question that I asked for my participants. The pie chart reveals how the focus group purchased their music tracks and albums, with internet downloads coming out top with over half of the votes. These results would have been very different compared to 5 years ago. The explosion of the internet has created a whole new sector for the music industry to sell and distribute music, where you can purchase individual songs and albums to your computer or laptop from sites such as iTunes, Amazon and HMV. Unlike the former, Amazon and HMV sell CD’s as well, having moved into the download business as consumer demand grew. Furthermore, internet sales of music is expected to overtake the ‘old fashioned’ method of by a CD by 2012 according to study by Forrester Research (Feb 2008). The survey was undertaken in the USA and Canada and involved 5000 participants. Forrester’s information has suggested that the annual growth rate of digital downloads will be at around 23% per year. I think that the dominance of internet downloads is slightly surprising as CD sales are still higher than internet sales. One reason for this is because the technology of purchase downloads is still relatively new, with some people older people sticking with their ‘old fashioned’ methods of listening to music (CD, Tape, Vinyl). I myself still buy CD’s as I prefer to be able to hold the product that I have bought compared to the music track on your computer.
This next Pie chart is in response to the question about how often the participants in my questionnaire watch music television channels such as TMF and The Hits. These music channels show music videos to showcase and promote an artists new song. Music Channels can be a used effectively to help promote the artists song to the correct target audience. This could happen by promoting it on a certain genre of music channel. Due to satellite television, there are now 20 or 30 music channels on offer, all with different genres of music. Examples of this include Kerrang (Rock/Metal), MTV Dance (R&B, Drum ‘n’ bass etc) and VH1 Classic (Older music, 80’s and 90’s music videos).
Television music channels are popular with the participants in my focus group. 9 of the 10 people who replied claimed they watched these channels, with 4 people saying they watched on a daily basis, while 3 people watched it 3 times a week and 2 watched it once a week. From these results, the females watched the music channels less, with 2 replies for 3 times a week and 2 for once a week. This shows that girls from the target audience tend to watch music channels less than males.
Radio is another great example of promoting your music to a wide audience. As you can see, radio is very popular from my results. The Pie chart shows that 9 out of the 10 people listen to the radio at least once a week, with 6 of those listening to it everyday. This shows that radio is a great way to promote new material if your target audience is similar to the people who have answered in this questionnaire. I was not surprised by the results from this questionnaire, as radio shows are highly popular with people in this demographic. However, I am an outlier in the results as I tend not to listen to the radio regularly, preferring to choose what music I listen to from my collection. Another factor is that I do not own a radio in my bedroom, which is where I normally listen to my music.
The next two questions I asked were over the use of the internet and if they use it to its full potential. Firstly, I asked them if they used the internet to find out about a music band through a social networking site, sites including MySpace, Facebook etc. I received 6 replies saying that they had used a social networking site for that purpose, while the other 4 had not done the same. This questionnaire shows the versatility of the internet and social networking sites. Furthermore, social networking sites, especially MySpace, make it so much easier to promote new music and more importantly unsigned artists and bands world wide.
The next question I asked them about was if they used music file sharing websites to consume music. They could be achieved in several ways through video hosting website YouTube or music specific hosting websites Spotify and Last F.M. YoutTube works by users uploading videos to the sites and are free to be watched by anyone. These videos may include new video or new songs without a video to showcase new talent. Spotify and Last F.M work a little differently as they are music specific. They offer thousands of tracks which you can listen to over the internet. You never own these songs, but they are free to listen to, making music easy to access and free if you have an internet connection. My results showed that 7 of the participants used a file sharing website to listen to music, while the other 3 did not. Music sharing is new phenomenon which has only recently taken off. However, my results show the popularity of this form of music consumption already.
Above is the next question I put forward to my audience. This question asked which music devices they owned. As you can see, everyone in my focus group a computer or laptop, with 9 of the people involved owning a mobile phone and a MP3 player/Ipod. The two most likely devices to play music I expected were the MP3 player/iPod and the computer. This graph would have looked completely different due to the then dominance of the CD player and technology such as Vinyl and the tape player still popular. However, the tape player is now redundant technology thanks to the emergence of the MP3 player at the start of the 21st century. As expected, MP3 players are highly popular as you can keep them in your pocket and listen to thousands of tracks were ever you are. Furthermore, the younger demographic are more likely to use MP3 players and iPods as they have been brought up with the technology. The older generation may still use the technology that they used when they were growing up, preferring a CD walkman or Vinyl record player against music downloads when listening to music.
Another question that I asked was if the focus went to gigs, and if so, how many times a year. From the responses I received, 7 said that they did go to gigs, while the other 3 did not. Of the 7 people who went to gigs, I asked them how many times they went and the graph above shows the answers to this. As you can see, I had a varied number of different answers. 2 participants only went to 1 or 2 gigs a year. Furthermore, I had one person who went to 3 or 4 a year, while 2 people chose the 5 to 6 option and I had one reply for 9-10 and 11+. This wide variety of answers shows that gigs are popular with the focus group. Gigs on numerous occasions shows the target audience of that group and this is shown with the picture on page 2 of my evaluation. The people who have answered for the higher options of this question show that they have a wider musical taste and like to attend gigs as it pure form of the bands material.
Here is the last question in my questionnaire. I asked my audience how they found out about new music and material. As the Pie chart shows, radio and the internet are the most popular ways of finding out this information. The radio is an excellent place to find out about new music and the DJ has full control over what is being played and therefore, offers listeners the chance to listen to bands and artists that may not have listened to before. After hearing a band or artist on the radio, you may then want to find out more about the band on their MySpace page or on their own webpage. Other ways that my focus group found out about new music included word of mouth, music magazines such as Q and NME and gigs which bands have played at. These results are not surprising as I expected the internet and radio to be the largest factors for when audiences are accessing popular music.
I have selected a small group of participants to complete my questionnaire on how people consume and find out about new bands. In my focus group, there are 6 male and 4 female. All questionnaires were filled out through the social networking site Facebook. The returned questionnaires were filled out by friends of mine who have an account on Facebook. These results were collected in October 2009. The purpose of these results were to find out how my target audience like to listen to music and how they purchase music products, whether that may through the internet or thanks to high street shops. Furthermore, I wanted to find out how the focus group found out about new music and bands. This research will also help me when producing my media music video for year 13. Furthermore, the information collected from the questionnaires will help when promoting the band in magazines, over the internet and on television.
Firstly, I wanted to find out about their age group and occupation. The majority of the focus group was in the age bracket 16-20, with 2 of my audience in the age group of 21-25. 8 of my audience were in some kind of educational (6th form, college or university), while I had two replies for employment.
Above is the first questionnaire about their musical tastes. This graph shows their replies to which genres of music they enjoyed to listen to. They could have picked up to 4 different genres for this question. From this graph, I can see that Rock is a popular genre within my focus group. Furthermore, indie (the genre that my unsigned band for my music video) is quite popular, with 4 votes from the replies. This graph shows that the rock/indie culture and drum ‘n’ bass genres are big hits with the 16-25 age group. This was expected as these genres and sub-genres target an audience similar to that of my questionnaire.. This is shown when they play gigs and how buys they music tracks. Below is an example of this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2007/aug/26/1?picture=330634571
This picture was taken at Reading festival in 2007, when British Indie band Bloc Party played. The picture shows that most of the crowd are below 30, as the target audience suggests, and have a variety of males and females watching. This evidence shows that the results I have collected are a true representation of the target audience for the most popular genres in my focus group.
Here is the next question that I asked for my participants. The pie chart reveals how the focus group purchased their music tracks and albums, with internet downloads coming out top with over half of the votes. These results would have been very different compared to 5 years ago. The explosion of the internet has created a whole new sector for the music industry to sell and distribute music, where you can purchase individual songs and albums to your computer or laptop from sites such as iTunes, Amazon and HMV. Unlike the former, Amazon and HMV sell CD’s as well, having moved into the download business as consumer demand grew. Furthermore, internet sales of music is expected to overtake the ‘old fashioned’ method of by a CD by 2012 according to study by Forrester Research (Feb 2008). The survey was undertaken in the USA and Canada and involved 5000 participants. Forrester’s information has suggested that the annual growth rate of digital downloads will be at around 23% per year. I think that the dominance of internet downloads is slightly surprising as CD sales are still higher than internet sales. One reason for this is because the technology of purchase downloads is still relatively new, with some people older people sticking with their ‘old fashioned’ methods of listening to music (CD, Tape, Vinyl). I myself still buy CD’s as I prefer to be able to hold the product that I have bought compared to the music track on your computer.
This next Pie chart is in response to the question about how often the participants in my questionnaire watch music television channels such as TMF and The Hits. These music channels show music videos to showcase and promote an artists new song. Music Channels can be a used effectively to help promote the artists song to the correct target audience. This could happen by promoting it on a certain genre of music channel. Due to satellite television, there are now 20 or 30 music channels on offer, all with different genres of music. Examples of this include Kerrang (Rock/Metal), MTV Dance (R&B, Drum ‘n’ bass etc) and VH1 Classic (Older music, 80’s and 90’s music videos).
Television music channels are popular with the participants in my focus group. 9 of the 10 people who replied claimed they watched these channels, with 4 people saying they watched on a daily basis, while 3 people watched it 3 times a week and 2 watched it once a week. From these results, the females watched the music channels less, with 2 replies for 3 times a week and 2 for once a week. This shows that girls from the target audience tend to watch music channels less than males.
Radio is another great example of promoting your music to a wide audience. As you can see, radio is very popular from my results. The Pie chart shows that 9 out of the 10 people listen to the radio at least once a week, with 6 of those listening to it everyday. This shows that radio is a great way to promote new material if your target audience is similar to the people who have answered in this questionnaire. I was not surprised by the results from this questionnaire, as radio shows are highly popular with people in this demographic. However, I am an outlier in the results as I tend not to listen to the radio regularly, preferring to choose what music I listen to from my collection. Another factor is that I do not own a radio in my bedroom, which is where I normally listen to my music.
The next two questions I asked were over the use of the internet and if they use it to its full potential. Firstly, I asked them if they used the internet to find out about a music band through a social networking site, sites including MySpace, Facebook etc. I received 6 replies saying that they had used a social networking site for that purpose, while the other 4 had not done the same. This questionnaire shows the versatility of the internet and social networking sites. Furthermore, social networking sites, especially MySpace, make it so much easier to promote new music and more importantly unsigned artists and bands world wide.
The next question I asked them about was if they used music file sharing websites to consume music. They could be achieved in several ways through video hosting website YouTube or music specific hosting websites Spotify and Last F.M. YoutTube works by users uploading videos to the sites and are free to be watched by anyone. These videos may include new video or new songs without a video to showcase new talent. Spotify and Last F.M work a little differently as they are music specific. They offer thousands of tracks which you can listen to over the internet. You never own these songs, but they are free to listen to, making music easy to access and free if you have an internet connection. My results showed that 7 of the participants used a file sharing website to listen to music, while the other 3 did not. Music sharing is new phenomenon which has only recently taken off. However, my results show the popularity of this form of music consumption already.
Above is the next question I put forward to my audience. This question asked which music devices they owned. As you can see, everyone in my focus group a computer or laptop, with 9 of the people involved owning a mobile phone and a MP3 player/Ipod. The two most likely devices to play music I expected were the MP3 player/iPod and the computer. This graph would have looked completely different due to the then dominance of the CD player and technology such as Vinyl and the tape player still popular. However, the tape player is now redundant technology thanks to the emergence of the MP3 player at the start of the 21st century. As expected, MP3 players are highly popular as you can keep them in your pocket and listen to thousands of tracks were ever you are. Furthermore, the younger demographic are more likely to use MP3 players and iPods as they have been brought up with the technology. The older generation may still use the technology that they used when they were growing up, preferring a CD walkman or Vinyl record player against music downloads when listening to music.
Another question that I asked was if the focus went to gigs, and if so, how many times a year. From the responses I received, 7 said that they did go to gigs, while the other 3 did not. Of the 7 people who went to gigs, I asked them how many times they went and the graph above shows the answers to this. As you can see, I had a varied number of different answers. 2 participants only went to 1 or 2 gigs a year. Furthermore, I had one person who went to 3 or 4 a year, while 2 people chose the 5 to 6 option and I had one reply for 9-10 and 11+. This wide variety of answers shows that gigs are popular with the focus group. Gigs on numerous occasions shows the target audience of that group and this is shown with the picture on page 2 of my evaluation. The people who have answered for the higher options of this question show that they have a wider musical taste and like to attend gigs as it pure form of the bands material.
Here is the last question in my questionnaire. I asked my audience how they found out about new music and material. As the Pie chart shows, radio and the internet are the most popular ways of finding out this information. The radio is an excellent place to find out about new music and the DJ has full control over what is being played and therefore, offers listeners the chance to listen to bands and artists that may not have listened to before. After hearing a band or artist on the radio, you may then want to find out more about the band on their MySpace page or on their own webpage. Other ways that my focus group found out about new music included word of mouth, music magazines such as Q and NME and gigs which bands have played at. These results are not surprising as I expected the internet and radio to be the largest factors for when audiences are accessing popular music.
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