5. My target audience

For my music video, it is essential that I understand the audience that my artist is targeting; in this case, I am targeting the mainstream 16-25 year old mass market.  Therefore, I have decided to research the audience to understand their behaviours and their interests in order to tailor my brand and products around them, with the intention of maximizing audience appeal.

A moodboard based on the behaviours of the '
mainstream' audience.

I initially began by creating a small moodboard in order to gain a general understanding of the target audience.  The 'mainstream' audience is one that is described to 'play things safe', doing what appears to be popular or the current trend of today.  Mainstream audiences (as referred to by UKTribes) lack a desire to discover 'less popular' genres or artists.  They are content with what's popular, such as chart music, Saturday Night TV, etc.  With this being said, the target audience is known to be very loyal in regards to what they support and enjoy.

Listening to Music:

From my research, I've learnt that the target audience uses digital methods of listening to music.  Youtube and streaming services are the most popular among this age group coming in at 74% and 56% (according to the 4Youth community); they are even content with paying for these services primarily because of the ease of access and the ease of music discovery.  For example, pre-made playlists made by services like Spotify and Youtube give people the ability to listen to the music they enjoy and introduce them to new artists.  Additionally, they favour the sound quality which they get from these services, as well as the chance to download these songs to listen to offline.  

However, this is not to say that the target audience is against the idea of purchasing physical copies of their favourite music, as this not only supports the artist but it gives them a sense of their own identity (as Gauntlett theorised).  For this reason and for the sake of nostalgia, artists cater for this by selling vinyl, cassettes, CDs, etc. for their albums or singles.

Keeping Up to Date with Music & Artists:

The target audience also prides themselves in keeping up with their favourite artists through various means.  They mostly do this through mostly virtual means,  through social media, podcasts, radio and artist newsletters; these can also be used for music discovery.  

Additionally, some music listeners in this demographic like to feel more connected and up to date with the artists to a greater extent, hence the reason for buying merchandise and tour tickets.  They gain pleasure from supporting the artist in person or implicitly (by purchasing & wearing apparel put out by the artist).  This is done in other ways as well, through engaging with additional content, such as 'behind the scenes' videos and footage about the artist in regards to their real lives.

The audience feels that social media can be really useful for staying connected with artists, giving them the ability to have dialogues (even if brief) with the artist on platforms like Twitter.  As previously mentioned, fans like to gain an insight into the life of the artist outside of the music, through the use of features such as IGTV on Instagram.                                                                                                                                       
To conclude, researching the target audience has given me an insight into how I need to guide my artist's social media presence in order to maximize my appeal to the mass market which I am targeting the video too.  Next, it is essential that I plan out what additional audio-visual content I will be producing and what I will be using social media for, in order to engage the target audience as much as possible.