Research: Audience Identification

Audience Identification

In media the audience is the people that take in  and receive what is made by the media institutions, for example we are the audience to when we watch a film that has been made by a media company because we are watching it. The same applies to music and music videos. 

In terms of the music industry, institutions and artists need to find the right target market to become successful. When looked into in more depth we can see that it different audiences vary by factors such as:

• Gender.
• Race.
• Social Class.
• Age.

Music institutions also categorize and group people by the skill and qualification level of their jobs. These groups are:

A = Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals.

B = Middle management, teachers, many 'creatives' e.g graphic designers. 

C1 = Office supervisors, junior managers, nursers, specialist clerical staff etc.

C2 = Skilled workers, trades-person (white collar)

D = Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar) 

E = Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers. 

This is because if everyone is already categorized then conducting this research would be much faster and save a lot more time. Once this is complete it is helpful because if the media institution can identify who the target audience is then they can evaluate the style of the artist and expose them to the right target audience to help them to become more successful. 

However by categorizing people like this there are disadvantages as well, because they do not taking the social factors into consideration and they only look at the job however that is no longer something that is controlled by class/ social status also by stereotyping people without doing more specific research will mean that people that do not like this will be missed as the artist isn't relevant to that specific person and it will ultimately lower the success rate of the artist. 

A table was created to break down and evaluate the audiences reaction in its different stages. (Table below) 

To conclude I believe that my media group will have a target audience aimed ages 16 - 26 years old and fall under category C1, C2, D and E. They will also have to like the Hip-Hop genre, so I need to look into what it takes to appeal to this audience to make my music video successful.