Target Audience Research - Evaluation - Sub culture theory

What is the purpose of a target audience?

Having a target audience is very important, if you don't have a target audience then you cant guarantee that your product will be successful in this case music videos. A target audience is a specific group of people that are part of a market which a product (music video) is aimed at. The purpose of having a target audience is so that we as a group can make our music video, based on what a certain group of individuals want to see. Without this target audience we wont know what we actually need to include in order to reach out to a certain group of people.

What types of research did you carry out and why?

We carried out two different types of research, the first one that we did was a questionnaire. Our reasoning for getting people to fill in the questionnaires is so that we can see what our target audience want to see in a video, therefore we can make sure that our music video is exactly what the target audience want to see and will result in them being interested in it and watching it. The second type of research that my group completed is the vox pop interviews, we decided to interview people by recording them, is because they can say a lot more than what they can through the questionnaire and by recording we can watch it back and analyse what it is that we need to include. They are limited to what they can say through a questionnaire as, it is time consuming to write a lot on the questionnaire, to add to this there is also not enough room. Therefore resulting in vox pop interviews gives the interviewees a chance to say more.

How many people did you survey and why?

Our group interviewed 40 people but we had to split it up therefore I surveyed 13 people between my group, the other two people in my group surveyed 13 people as well, we distributed the questionnaire by recording peoples answers. We decided to split the surveys so that we could split the responsibility. We decided to interview 40 people because we wanted a collective response and we thought this was the correct amount for this.

Were the vox pops successful and how it will help you with planning your music video?

I think that the vox pop interviews were really successful, this is because now as a group we know what to include in our music video to ensure that we reach out to our target audience, who we are aiming the music video at. The vox pop interviews will certainly help us when it comes to planning our music video. This is because we have all of the opinions of what our target audience want to see, now we just have to make sure that we include everything they say. This means that we need to make a list of all of the things that they want to see, and see if we can do this. Its extremely important that we do this so that we are completely sure that we are including what our target audience want to see, because without doing this, the music video wont be successful as it wont reach what target audience we have said it will.

  Pick 3 different questions and discuss the results that you received. Explain how your results will assist you and your group with planning the music video.

One of our questions we asked in the vox pop interviews and on the questionmusic video to create so that it matches our target audience. The response that we received helped us to decide this, we decided that we are going to create a concept based music video, with some narrative towards it. Another question that we asked was 'What's your favorite music genre?', we decided that this was an important question to ask because we need to make sure that we are actually creating a music video for the target audience who like the music that the artist from the music video created, otherwise we wont have the target audience watching the video. The results helped us as the audience answered with dance or pop, Example relates to both of these music genres, so this helped us confirm that we will be creating a music video for Example - Stay awake.naire was 'Do you like example?'. First of all our reasoning for asking this question is because it was an artist who we wanted to involve our music around and choose one of his songs for our music video, however we did have to bear in mind that we may have to change it if the audience didn't like him. We received positive results and the ones that we hoped for , in order for us for it to be strongly considered to use Example for our music video. Therefore this helped our group massively in preparation for planning our music video. Another question that we asked was 'Do you prefer narrative, performance or concept based music videos?'. First of all our reasoning for asking this question is because we wanted to know what type of video our target audience liked, so that we can then decide what type of

 Were there any answers that you had to reconsider and why?

Yes, one of the questions that we asked was 'What do you expect to see in a music video', one of the answers that we received was performance, with our idea, music genre and artist we arent able to do this, so we had to weigh out the situation and see how many people wanted the performance based, and it was a very small amount that did, so we decided to carry on with the concept and narrative based music video, as only a small amount of the target audience would be affected.

Sub culture theory.

Sub culture theory is a group of people who are together through their tastes, this can be down to anything such as music, furniture or even clothes. I'm going to be talking about it in respect of music. It can be known as a group of people who are placed outside of the mainstream, these are the type of people who could be known as going against whats current and popular. I looked at a theorist called Grant McCracken, who believed that the post modern world is full of different things dynaism, diversites and creativity. He also says that as an audience we look at different values and ideologies. In this case it would be wrong for us to say that all of the sub cultures come from one initial culture.

Another theory that I looked at was CCCS. This theory goes completely against McCracken's, this is because it states that all sub cultures come from one culture, and that all of the different sub cultures are made because of the mainstream. Overall he says that without the mainstream there wouldnt be any subcultures because it would of come from itself and not the mainstream. However people argue that this theory is out of date because now the word mainstream has a different meaning to what it used to have. The mainstream is constantly changing, it has also been said that there is not even a mainstream anymore and that there are just lots of streams.

The last theory I looked at was Hebdige's theory, he believes that even though some people thing the subcultures appear to be different to the mainstream and others , but actually they are all the same. He believes that there are no subculture theorys that everything is in the mainstream, theyre are just differnent parts which make up the mainstream.

However for the genre of music that I have chosen that my music video will be is dance. The theory that I have chosen to base my music video on his Hebdige's because he sayts that all the different cultures are brought together to make up the mainstream. My main reasonings for this is because the genre that my music song is, is Dance in which is noticbily in the mainstream, and it is an important genre in which makes up the mainstream. I have chosen the artist Example, who fits into the music catagory dance, in which makes up the mainstream just like Hebdige believes.











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