Research into my target audience

The genre of my music video is going to be pop so I need to make sure I follow the correct conventions of a typical pop music video so I attract the right audience. I decided to research about who the target audience are for pop music videos.

Pop music is a genre of ‘popular music’ which began in the 1950’s deriving from rock and roll. Pop music generally includes short to medium length songs with a written based format. Pop music features instruments including electric guitars, drums and bass. The genre is generally thought of something which is commercially recorded and has a mass audience appeal. In relation to the artists who produce pop music, many people believe that Michael Jackson is the ‘King of Pop’ and they say that the pop genre didn’t really exist until he became popular. Recent artists who produce successful pop music and have a wide audience are Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Robbie Williams and Olly Murs.

Throughout the years, Pop music has changed drastically. It began from influences of other genres and the early pop music had its uses of vocal harmonies from gospel and soul music, instrumentation from Jazz, Country, rock music and orchestration from classical music, tempo from dance music, rhythmic elements from hip-hop music and also rap. In the 1940’s the improvement of technology and the microphone design allowed singers to have more of a personal style of singing. One of the reasons as to why the genre is so popular is because of the invention of the television in the 1950’s. Performances from artists such as Abba made the genre immensely popular gaining fans from across the world. In the early 1980’s this was when the promotion of pop music had been affected by TV channels such as MTV.

 

I researched into gender and I found that females are more inclined to listen to pop music than males. I knew this from my own experiences and this could also be evident from the results from the questionnaire which I created. Females are typically attracted to young boy bands and artists who are usually good looking and create music which are based around love and a youthful style music. An example of a boy band that follows these ideas is One Direction. One Direction has a very large female fan base spreading from all over the world. Their fans are attracted to their looks and the enjoyment of their songs as they are commonly based around the teenage age group based on love and growing up which is expressed though the lyrics. Females would also be inspired by female artists who they can look up to and relate to in some way. An example of an artist who has these elements is Beyoncé. She has a very wide audience and is popular because of the powerful music which she produces and also the way which she is presented in the media. I discovered that the age range is from around 12- middle 20’s. I believe that this age group is accurate from the evidence which we have on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. I believe that because of the advances of technology in today’s world it would be easily accessible to target the audience for pop music videos. This is also enhanced by the amount of merchandise which pop stars have which attract their audience and make the artists and their record label more popular. Artists such as Katy Perry produce merchandise such as fancy dress, perfume, stationary etc. These products can be promoted and distributed easily to her audience which would therefore make Katy Perry a more successful artist. Teenagers would be more interested in purchasing products and merchandise from a pop star rather than a rock star for example. This is because the audience for rock music would generally be older than the audience for pop so, would therefore not be interested in buying merchandise such as fancy dress and stationary because they would have grown out of it. Pop stars use merchandise as an advertising technique for their song and album as it makes them more prosperous. This is beneficial for the artists and also the audience because they are both receiving enjoyment out of the songs which pop stars produce.

 

 

The target audience for pop music generally have similar interests and hobbies. They are similar so people should be able to recognise someone who likes pop music based on their appearance and life style. The target audience will predominantly fall within the demographic group C2-E. This is because many of the people within this target audience would be unemployed, due to still being in full time education or in a part time job. However, pop music also targets people in their 20’s so they would be skilled manual workers as some may have full time jobs, but they aren’t skilled enough to be classed in the C1 category. From my experience it is very rare to find people aged 40+ listening to pop music and enjoy it. This is because they have been brought up where pop music wasn’t even around so wouldn’t be used to the style of music which it produces. Whereas, people growing up in today’s society would automatically be used to the style of music which the genre pop entails so it wouldn’t be unusual or new to them.