Research - Audience Identification

Audiences are groups of people who consume the entertainment given to them which suit their interests. Audiences can be categorised with age, ethnicity, class, status and income so they can categorise audiences with their basic features. It’s extremely important for an artist to measure their audiences because they need to know who they are aiming their entertaining with their music videos.

Social Categories:

A	Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals.
B	Middle management, teachers, many ‘creative’ e.g. graphic designers.
C1	Skilled workers, trade persons (white collar).
C2	Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, specialist clerical staff, etc.
D	Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar).
E	Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers.

Advantages of Categorising Audiences:

·         Easier to target.

·         Allows us to make specific choices.

·         Idea of what people are interested in.

·         Use information to encourage companies to advertise on your radio station.

·         Knowing what products they would buy.

·         Being content to suit a target audience.

Disadvantages of Categorising Audience:

·         Doesn’t consider that people are different.

·         Doesn’t consider peoples interests, just income and status.

Audience Reactions:

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT	This describes how an audience interacts with media text. Different people react in different ways to the same text, linking to Hebdige’s theory of subcultures.
AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS	These are what the audience thinks about an artists and their music, for example audiences expect certain aspects from different genres, which links to one of the 8 things Goodwin mentions in his theory, which is a music video always has Genre Characteristics.
AUDIENCE FOREKNOWLEDGE	This is what the audience knows about a music artist and their song/video.
AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION	This is how an audience relates to an artist, linking to Dyer’s star theory.
AUDIENCE PLACEMENT	This is how the media producers target a particular audience and make them feel that the music video is specially ‘for them’.

Different Artist Appeals:

Bands/artists such as; one direction and Justin Bieber appeal to young girls who are between the ages of 8 and 19. So the content of the album, artist image and the music video. Another example is the arctic monkeys, they are an indie rock band who appeal to older, more mature audiences.

This information has helped me understand that I need to do a lot of research on which category of audiences would I like to target my music video at to be more successful in the release of the music video. Although it’s hard, I would love to be able to aim my music video at all audiences and give out a message. However, picking an audience would leave me to deciding that I would like to aim my music video at an audience who would be smart enough to take in the message and understand serious events which will potentially occur in my music video. This means I would be interested in aiming my music video at a higher class audience, so they get the deep message in the music video.

Different genres definitely appeal to different audiences as they express different themes and conventions which only certain people appeal to.