Audience
To find out about potential viewers for our music video, we conducted quantitative research by using a questionnaire. We did this to help us tailor our product to our audience.
Originally, we used a physical, paper questionnaire, but then found that an online version was a much better idea. Here are some examples of the results for our paper questionnaire:
We decided to switch to an online version since it meant that we wouldn't have to enter all our results manually. It was easier to re-create our questionnaire online, with the addition of a few extra options and slight re-wording of our questions.
I would have liked to have also include qualitative research, but due to time constraints, I was unable to do this. I did informally ask people I knew various questions, but didn’t carry this out to the extent that I desired.
The results can be found below. However, here are some results to our paper questionnaire on the left. In total, 70 people answered our questionnaire, giving us a wide range of responses, and allowing us to define our target audience more precisely.
Results
First of all, we asked for basic information to get a better understanding of our audience. The majority that answered our questionnaire are female which was surprising.
Pop was the most popular genre, but soul and rock were also highly chosen. Luckily James Bay fits into these genres.
Most of our audience are under 18, which isn't surprising as the questionnaire was shared on Facebook.
Unsurprisingly, almost all of the 70 people questioned listen to music every day. It is so accessible nowadays on radios and internet streaming services.
On the other hand, even though music videos are more readily available to be seen with the advent of YouTube, Vimeo, Vevo and other video sites, they aren't viewed as often as music is listened to.
This means that we will have to try to make our video memorable so our audience want to watch it again and share it.
YouTube is definitely the most popular music video hosting site, even though Vevo have their own website, they still upload to YouTube. If we were to make an official music video, releasing on YouTube would help gain more views than other video sites, and increase the popularity of the artist.
Mallory Knox is an indie band, so that's why fewer people have heard of them. The pop artists are the most popular with the people surveyed, but James Bay and Ed Sheeran, which are singer/songwriters (although still arguably pop) are still well known. Imitating their style of music videos would be a good idea, since people will recognise their style.
Our results show that people think seeing the artist / band on the digipak is important. If they have a logo, including that helps identify it too.
James Bay has a hand drawn outline of him on his album art (See my digipak analysis for more information) so doing something like this would work well.
Unfortunately we can't use the real James Bay, but we can have our actor for our music video on the album cover.
Having the label's logo is still important, but it is usually small and out of the way.
The majority of people questioned think performance and narrative is important in a music video. Getting the balance right is important.
We hope to have performance during the chorus that's repeated, and tell a narrative during the verses.
There are more responses for narrative over performance, suggesting that it is preferred, but including both is a must.
Conclusion
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Since our questionnaire was shared on social media, we cannot take our results as fact, since only people we know, which are mostly going to be around the same age as us would have seen and answered it.
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Our target audience is in the age range of 16-25, so a younger audience, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t be trying to appeal to a wider age group too.
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Gender is not a heavily determining factor for our audience, since our results showed a fairly even split between male and female.
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We did not take into account ethnicity, since we felt that song preference doesn’t depend on this as heavily as it does with age. Generally, our genre, singer / songwriter appeals to a younger audience of a variety of ethnicities. However, if we were to choose an ethnic group, it would be white British, since the song is in English, James Bay is English, and our video will be produced in England.
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YouTube would be our choice of platform to show our video on, but music videos are not watched as frequently as music is listened to.
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Our music video will show both performance and narrative, since this received more than 75% of the votes in our questionnaire.
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The digipak should show the artist or something related to them (In our case, James Bay is always seen with his guitar) their logo and a track list.