Audience Research

 Audience Research 

The Music Industry  

The Music industry has changed rapidly over the last 10 years. Through the greater and continuous use of digital music servers (Such as iTunes, YouTube and other online music sites) the music industry is delivering more artists to a Larger and more World-Wide audience. According to 'www.ifpi.org', there has been a record high growth in revenues in therms of trade, an increase of about 0.8% across Europe, the USA and Latin America.

Although much of the Recording industries revenue still comes from form of physical format sales, such as Cd's of Albums (51%), There has been a large increase in the amount of revenue coming from digital forms of sales, such as iTunes and other music buying websites (39%) (fig.1). This demonstrates that the music video is moving more into the way of digital distribution.

Fig 1

In 2013, it was found that the was a 40% increase in people that paid of online music subscriptions compared to those in 2012. Although that physical forms of music sales still account to over half the music industries revenue as previously stated, it has suffered a fall of 4.4% over the last year. This is indicating that the form of digital music sales are increasing and will eventually over take the physical forms of music sales in the near future.  

Also the music has massively changed over the years; The 50's saw the birth of rock 'n' Roll with artists such as Elvis Presley, the 60's & 70's brought along massive rock Bands such as the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Queen compared to more modern music with the 90's and 00's producing a massive pop music scene with the likes of the spice girls, Madonna and Britney Spears also following on to the present day. As you can see below, the top 5 songs that have been decided from all the genres played on the radio consists of all 5 being pop songs. This emphasizes the ever large pop culture that is still around today.

Indie/ Alternative Rock Audience Research

Commonly, young people from ages 13-22 are the typical audience for indie/alternative music genre. This is due to the people of these ages can relate to the themes and messages the bands are portraying through their songs and persona. Many younger people are attracted to indie/alternative genres as when people are going through their teenage years, they use this time to find themselves and experience relationships, going against the norms and values of society and having fun and exciting experiences with new friends. These messages and themes are portrayed through the artists songs which as their audiences are going through these experiences, they can relate to and therefore feel like the artists are directly talking to them. 

Also, indie/alternative band members typically wear casual clothing (such as skinny Jeans, Plaid/lumber jack shirts, trainers or canvas shoes and colourful jackets and sometimes vintage clothing). This helps connect to the audience as these items of clothing could be typically warn by the audience members of that age. As well as this, if the audience want to further connect to the artists they can easily buy cheap items that suit the genre of their favorite band.

The genre of alternative/indie rock music is followed by both genders. There is no clear division between both sexes and which attracts a much more larger fan base, creating a larger revenue for the band.   

How do institutions attract their audience?:


One band use an abstract costume and take on a music video which helped to attract lots of attention to them and their song. In their music video 'Paradise', Coldplay portrayed their main character in the narrative as an 'elephant'/ a man in an elephant costume. This was used to take an abstract take on a quite serious message which gave a comical tone to the video and to attract various numbers and types of audiences.
      

As well as this, the band 'Imagine Dragons' use one of their music videos, to commemorate a fan who lost their battle against Cancer. This can be used to help the band gain a larger audience as the people who knew the person they dedicated their video to may start to listen to their music and it will also attract others who may have battled cancer before, are currently battling cancer or know someone who has been affected by this. It will also give the band a new image as they pay their respects to one of their fans which may change they way people see the band for the better.

As well as some bands doing positive and abstract things in their music videos to try and get more audiences to watch their videos and listen to their music,  Artist such a Jenifer Lopez make videos on taboo or shocking content to attract lost of different types of audience to her videos. An example of this is her newly released music video 'Booty' featuring artist Iggy Azalea. The video is based around a montage of the two artist, in sexually explicit costumes, dancing and singing together. The combination of the sexually explicit costume and the erotic dance creates a shocking music video which may offend some audiences but will attract some as well.