'A target audience is a particular intended audience of a musician'
Why is a target audience important?
Identifying a target audience is crucial because it allows effective marketing strategies to be put in place.
E.g: Targeting an international audience by advertising on Instagram and YouTube, targeting a Chinese audience by advertising on Chinese social media platforms such as Dou Yin and WeiBo. Targeting teenagers by advertising on TikTok. The methods to approach different target groups vary based on demographics and platforms available in the region.
Knowing the target audience can encourage the musician to think from their perspective and consider how to generate a stronger bond with their fanbase by creating music that can resonate more with the musician’s audience. The stronger the connection, the more likely the fans will share the music with their friends and close ones and as a result expand the audience range.
When considering a musician’s target audience and how to reach them, the following points are necessary:
The platforms they have access to and frequently use (young people tend to prefer TikTok and YouTube, whereas older people starting from middle-aged groups may use Facebook more often)
The best way to reach them (perhaps real-life locations are more effective to reach a musician’s target audience such as jazz bars)
The type of content they like to consume (the social issues in concern or perhaps they enjoy humour and comedy, animals, movies and more)
The form of content they prefer (funny videos, high-quality artsy photos…)
Music artists tend to stay connected with fans to maintain the bond and create buzz and hype. They can achieve this by simply sharing a book or a film they like, they can react to news to express their opinion and show character. Moreover, with live-streaming being so popular, celebrities can go live online and chat with their fans whilst doing something else such as cooking.
All these interactions create a more ‘wholesome’ image and makes them appear more humane, especially through sharing the little things in life or a picture that is casually taken rather than one that is shot professionally by a photographer, this helps generate a closer proxemic between the audience and the artist.
GOLDWING music video's target audience as well as Billie Eilish's main target audience:
This is an interesting meme as it addresses the niche target audience of Billie Eilish, but it is important to note that this was posted in 2019 when Billie Eilish's exploration of music was very much focused on pop, whereas now, particularly in the album 'Happier Than Ever' in which there is GOLDWING, Billie Eilish's style evolves constantly which would inevitably lead to changing target audiences.
GOLDWING falls into a niche pool of fans as it is a very contrasting combination of church hymn and techno which is very rare on the music market and would most likely attract artists who are more open to new art and potentially techno lovers.
GOLDWING official lyric video
I intend to target and engage my audience by releasing the music video on YouTube and promoting the release by posting extracts of the music video on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
The music video is abstract, artistic and makes inter contextual reference to art pieces, it equally explores topics such as identity, culture, gender and uses visual impact to address the entertainment industry and materialism. These are all my target audience's topics of interest.
I intend to engage my audience by inviting them to spot the 'Easter eggs' in the music video and also start '#' topics about anti-exploitation and following oneself and their heart.
Audience theory
from https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/teorias-de-la-sociedad-de-la-informacion-y-la-globalizacion
Jeremy Tunstall
-Audience Engagement Theory-
Audiences passively or actively consume media depending where they are and what they are doing, they fall into three categories; Primary, secondary and tertiary audience engagement.
Primary
· The Cinema requires the audience’s utmost attention to watch the screened films.
Secondary
· The audience consume in the background perhaps while they are doing something else (listening to the radio while driving, watching soap opera while looking at phones).
Tertiary
· The audience is almost unaware they are consuming (Advertisements in a magazine, music in the background when shopping).
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist.
-Adorno has strong views on Fascism and ‘Culture industry’, he wrote the books ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ and ‘Negative Dialectics’ which has influenced new left-wing views.
-The culture industries(combine the creation, production, and commercialization of creative content: film, radio, books) mass produce low quality products carrying little meaning, rather than content that challenges people’s view on life.
-These products incorporate false needs into us. These needs are generated by capitalism which benefit from this, and such false needs replace true needs such as creativity and freedom.
-Adorno believes that capitalism encourages people to consume pointless text from the ‘culture industry’ so the audience are passively satisfied and are distracted from politics, a sense of commodity fetishism. Adorno has similar interests in Karl Marx but Marxist views focus more on the economic aspect of capitalism, Adorno focused on how culture played its role in keeping the things they are so people don’t go against the capitalist system.
-Adorno argues that media and TV in particular guides people away from talking to each other or questioning the oppression occurring in their lives. People passively consume what is in the media every day.
-Standardization, the illusion of choice and differentiation in a cultural paradigm defined by standardized modes of production. There will be the odd artist who tries to make different unique music but actually isn’t, this is pseudo individualization. However, now there are more original artists with unique styles and works, such as Billie Eilish.
Following on from Adorno's concept of entertainment and culture industry as a distraction from politics, art has also always been a medium to reflect and criticize politics as well as societal issues, with practitioners such as Bertolt Brecht and Joan Littlewood as well as song artists such as Billie Holliday, Childish Gambino, Angèle audiences are beginning to consider and analyze the hidden messages in music and other forms of art.
In the GOLDWING music video, my partner Arina and I aim to address the following themes and theories:
Steve Neale, Genre Theory (the shift from ethereal church hymn to techno)
Levi Strauss, Binary Opposition (The contrast in genre as well as the characters Arina and I embody)
Roland Barthes, Semiotics(use of symbolic codes as well as proairetic codes)
Jean Baudrillard, Postmodernism(split in meaning)
David Gauntlett, Identity
Judith Butler, Gender
Van Zoonen, the Male Gaze (confronting the male gaze)
Culture
Exploitation of humans as commodities
Identity
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