Target audience is a very important subject to look into when making a music video because the purpose of them being made is to gain popularity for the song and artist, and your need an audience to do so. The audience needs to be specific so you know who to aim your music video at therefore giving yourself a guide line of how your music video should be made and what people expect to see from it. This is essential for draw in an audience who will watch and enjoy it, therefore making the music video work for its purpose. We will be researching and looking into our target audience to help with our plans and ideas for our music video.
One of our chosen artists; Shawn Mendes' target audience is quite varied. In one of Shawn's albums 'Handwritten' his songs include many different genres such as pop music, pop rock and folk music. This allows him to attract quite a broad audience because he makes different types of music that different people will be interested in. However with our second chosen artist; Camila Cabello's genre of music is purely just pop music meaning she is slightly more limited. They both share a very similar fan base with regards to the ages of the target audience. Research shows that out of all of the music genres, pop is the most popular at a very far lead of 30% of people which is shown in the graph. This means that everyone who is into pop would have most likely listened to at least one of our chosen artists's songs.
In terms of age, the most common audience for the music genre of pop is people aged from 16 to 24. In terms of demographics, it is predominantly most common in white British people, including the UK and the USA which creates quite a big population. This means that 30% of teenagers would listen to pop music as their main genre, but this still doesn't exclude older people listening to pop. This research is mainly done on a younger generation of people, however that doesn't mean that people over the age of 24 do not listen to pop music. It just shows the majority.
Audience Theories
Music has a very powerful influence on people. Whether it be about crime or love, music can persuade people to do actions or put people in a mood desribed / mentioned in a song. This is known as the 'Hypodermic Needle Theory', where media messages are injected into the audience making them think in a certain way. This relates to our young target audience to people who listen to pop, as young people can be considered as vulnerable and quite gullible making them believe everything they see and hear. There are so many songs about love and break ups which may cause young people to think in a certain way and cause them problems. An example of an artist who creates music like this is Adele. People may listen to break up songs if they can relate to them putting them down and making them feel worse which is a big problem in society. Artists like Ed Sheeran and Chris Brown often create music about sex and drugs which can be quite dangerous for young people to listen to as it could influence them to do bad things. Artists like Eninem talk about crime and fighting which is also a concern for young people because it could influence them. Songs that are quite explicit are often made into a clean verision for people who don't like listening to these particualr lyrics or for younger people. However it is still easily accessed by anyone. We will most likely not use this theory within our music video because it is about a break up and our intentions are for people to enjoy the music video rather than make them feel down. The tune helps prevent the emotional mood behind the song because it is upbeat, so cutting to it with a fast pace will hopefully make it more interesting and enjoyable rather than sad.
Another audience theory that is relevant to our ideas for our music video is the 'Uses and Gratifications Theory' invented by Katz. The theory focuses on the consumer/audience instead of the message itself asking what people do in media. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting media into their own lives. This links to our video, because of the conventions of narrative, lyrics and visuals that can be related to people in the real world. As our song is about heart break and people cheating on each other, this demographic audience can most possibly be suited for anyone of the age of 16 years and older. This is because at this age people start learning about what love is and still aren't very mature, so they are more likely to be in frequent relationships with different people. Therefore they are breaking up and moving on a lot learning how to love and understand it, and not with the same person for a long time. Unfortunatly, it is estimated that 60% of marriages will end up in a divorce, and this could be due to cheating, which is the basic story line of our chosen music video. Therefore this can be related to a range of demographics especially regarding age, because anyone could experience this type of break-up becuase its a basic storyline. Therefore anyone can easily relate to it making them want to listen to it.
Another theory which we are certain will be included in our music video is 'Andrew Goodwin's Theory' which refers to the properties of music videos and how they all contain at least 3 of these properties. One consists of performance and narrative and that music videos will contain aspects of this. We will definitely be using this as it is important for making a music video to what it actually has to be - pretty much all music videos contain at least some narrative or performance or both. Preventing using this theory would basically make our music video into something else which we are avoiding.
Researching about target audiences has helped us to understand who our target audience actually is and leanr about the facts and figures of how they are into our chosen genre - pop. This research has also helped us understand audience theories and how we can include them in our music video. We have learn't about 3 but we have decided we probably won't use the 'Hyperdermic Needle Theory' because it may cause issues for people due to what the song is about. This research us has helped us towards creating our music video because we will know what to include to attract our audience in a positive way rather than provoking a bad message. We can base our music video upon the ages of our target audience (16-24) and make it appealing to that age group by creating it based on what they like and expect to see.
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