Listener Profiles/Radio Stations

In order for up and coming artists to become known by their audiences, it is great for them especially to be heard everywhere and anywhere, and a radio station is a key platform in succeeding their fame and also reaching out to their particular target audience that listen to that the radio station. Other than the creation of Web 2.0, Radio stations are probably the fastest way an artist can be recognised in the music industry and this would result in the increase of their popularity and success.

Radio 1

Radio 1 is extremely popular as a British Radio station, it broadcasts internationally and specialises in currant popular music and chart hits throughout the day. The Radio station provides alternative genres after 7.00 pm, including electronic dance, hip hop, rock and interviews with various celebrities and music artists. Radio 1 is mainly aimed at ages 15-29 but the average age of the audience is 33.

Capital FM

Capital is a Radio Network of nine independent contemporary hit radio stations in the UK. The stations serve a total population of 7.1 million listeners and target an audience of 15-34 age group. 

Heart

Heart is a network of 17 adult contemporary local radio stations in Central and Southern England and North Wales. Each station broadcasts localised breakfast/drivetime on weekdays and afternoons on weekends. Heart listeners are mainly female and aged between 25 and 45 years old. They are fanshion conscious yet family orientated and fun and also make time for themselves despite juggling various roles such as mothers, wives and professionals. 

Ideal Audience Member

Georgia is a 17 year-old girl who attends Sixth Form everyday, currently studying Music, Art and English Language as A Levels. She is known as a very intelligent and creative teenager which definitely reflects upon her A Level subject choices. Georgia is an aspiring singer/songwriter in which she gains inspiration from rather unknown artists of the indie genre although she is very versatile with the liking of other genres. She loves reading, socialising with friends, family time but especially loves attending gigs and festivals. Georgia uses social networks on a daily basis where she can update herself with the music artists she follows, such as Ed Sheeran, Jason Mraz, Ben Howard and many more acoustic singers. She is familiar with the indie conventions, researching regularly about the origination of the indie genre but also keeping up to date with any upcoming live concerts.

- I think this is our ideal audience member as from looking at Mike Dignam's and his similar artists' demographics, it appears that the audiences are generally from teenagers to young adults, therefore Georgia would fit perfectly.

Survey Results/Conclusions

We conducted an online survey in order to gather responses from the public via the internet as it seems that Web 2.0 is widely used by all ages these days. Due to the majority of our friends also using social networking sites, this gives an advantage as we can post our survey onto Facebook or 'tweet' it on Twitter, which then our friends (as our desired average age) can hopefully respond to our questionnaire.

1. WHAT IS YOUR AGE?

2. WHAT TYPE OF MUSIC DO YOU LISTEN TO?

3. IF INDIE, WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SUB-GENRE?

4. IF YOU DON'T LIKE INDIE MUSIC, WHY NOT?

- Production-wise, it's too basic. I prefer my music more mechanical, and more computerised- and I prefer it not to make pretences about being "real". 

- Boring

- I find it boring. 

5. HOW OFTEN DO YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC?

6. HOW OFTEN DO YOU ATTEND GIGS?

7. HOW OFTEN DO YOU STREAM MUSIC ONLINE?

8. WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR MUSIC FROM?

From looking at the results, it is clear that the average ages of people who listen to general music is from 15-24, in which the majority of this sample enjoy listening to the Indie genre. The age range of people that generally listen to music also correlates to the demographic research, therefore meaning that this is our target audience, especially as our demographics explain for Mike and similar artists that the target range is mainly teenage girls and young adults. Considering that the majority of people that we asked download and buy their music from Itunes or CD's, we will have to make sure our digipak will be worth buying therefore providing some bonus features such as a concert live song or a music video on the album might be a good idea.

Feedback From Audience

Our group decided to pitch our song to a Focus Group where in return they wrote down there thoughts, ideas and reactions to our song, which we can turn into ideas for our Music Video.

One of the main features that many of our focus group members brought up was the theme of a Love Story including: Boy and Girl, Relationship, Romance, Young Love and Break-Up. This leads us to believe that a key convention of our Music Video and Genre will be Lost Love.

Our Location will be an 'all natural' location as the majority of our Audience said that it would be best in a: field, river, beach, forest and include natural lighting and filters such as the sunrise and moonlight. An idea of rain was also brought forward to enhance the fact the song is sad but the nature element is till there. 

A convention we thought up in our original planning was that of 'flashbacks' or looking back to the couples memories together, the focus group also thought this up, without the influence of us, which increases our ambition to use this element in our music video. 

The Mise-En-Scene of our Video will include a scruffy casual look from the Artists and a guitar will also be present throughout to bring the music and talent of the Artist to the audience. 

Types Of Audiences

Types Of Audiences from annahigginson

Similar Artists Demographics

Artists that are similar to our chosen acoustic indie singer Mike Dignam, include:

- Ben Howard

- Jack Johnson

- Mumford and Sons (as their genre)

- Joshua Radin

- John Mayer

- Nick Camillo

- Jason Mraz

- Ed Sheeran 

- Paolo Nutini

To help provide knowledge about our target audience for our music video and genre, I will look into the demographics of some of the artists listed above by looking on their Facebook pages, Twitter, YouTube etc. 

Joshua Radin

Joshua Radin is known for his guitar in hand, acoustic indie genre and generally writes lyrics about love and girls, therefore this could be a good artist to look into. From looking at Joshua Radin's band page on Facebook, I noticed that compared to his twitter account he has more 'likes' than followers which may indicate that his listeners tend to keep up to date with his music via Facebook more than Twitter. The statistics also shows on his Facebook 'likes' that the "most popular age group" is 18-24 and with over 300,000 likes, it indicates that the majority of that number are between that age group. 

When looking into his Twitter page, I looked at the first few followers that he has and noticed there are probably more females than males but there are also a good amount of male followers. This suggests that we should be aiming for similar genders and ages but maybe focusing at females more.

However the Facebook page demonstrates that the majority of listeners live in Los Angeles, United States but this could be due to Joshua originating from there. Although this shows that our English artist will have more English listeners than from other origins. 

His YouTube video of his song 'Winter' shows the amount of views it has had which is very high of over 7 million. This indicates that his music is popular via YouTube, however he hasn't created many music videos for his songs.

Ben Howard

Ben Howard is very well known in the UK rather than Joshua Radin due to him being brought up in Cornwall, UK. He is known for his upbeat but relaxing acoustic music who has various audiences ranging from teenagers to adults.
From looking at his Facebook page I noticed that he has over 500, 000 'likes' on his band page which includes the majority of the 'likes' being aged 18-24 again. The Facebook page also shows the area in which most of the 'likes' come from which is London. 

When looking at his Twitter page, I realised the same outcome appeared to Joshua Radin's, that he has less followers than 'likes' however this could be because his target audiences like listening to his music but tend not to keep up to date on his career, tours and lifestyle etc. The followers of Ben's Twitter page also feature an equal mix of males and females unlike Joshua Radin mainly containing female listeners.


When looking at Ben's video comments underneath the music video 'Keep Your Head Up' on YouTube, I saw that there are a lot of complimentary comments about the video and how the camera men have filmed it, for example the use of the "fun" water slide in the video demonstrated something different for Indie and kept the young audience interested and entertained. The comments beneath the video include, "That looks so fun", "This video just gave me life", "Love the water slide" which suggests why they prefer that genre to other genres, that lip syncing hasn't got to be a huge part of the video and that a 'fun' side of a video is a good aspect to consider especially as our music choice includes an upbeat chorus.

Online Audience Survey

Above shows the online questionnaire we created on the online website of Survey Monkey. This will help us to identify our target audience for our music video and particular genre. After we have posted it around on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and have received some feedback, we will analyse the results from the survey and identify various audiences.

Audience Questionnaire

I decided to ask the members of my family on their opinions of the Indie genre. This will help gather together some audience research from a detailed sample of people from two age ranges, 50 and 20.

Person No.1 - Jill, 51
Person No.2 - David, 54
Person No.3 - Sam, 20

What do you like about the Indie genre? 
- It brings an upbeat but a soothing, catchy feel. I like that it has a different style and I know it won't disappoint But I particularly enjoy listening to Indie Pop, to artists such as Florence and the Machine and London Grammar.  
- I like the different sounds from the guitar, particularly enjoying Indie Rock with the likes of the Arctic Monkeys and The Vaccines. I like their upbeat tunes and how they suck you into their music. 
- The guitar solos mostly, I play guitar myself so I find that I can relate to the genre as I like to play some of their guitar parts. Although I do enjoy listening to Indie Pop, such as Bastille where their music is more electronic or drum & bass. 

Do you ever listen to the sub genre, Indie Acoustic at all?
- Yes occasionally, I think its very relaxing to listen to around the house. I enjoy listening to the likes of Lucy Rose and Daughter where they tend to use interesting sounds in their music. 
- Not at all.
- Not really.

How would you describe generally of an Indie Music Video?
- Natural feel, outdoors, love narrative, lip syncing to the camera.
- Happy, reminiscing over a relationship, natural.
- Cutting rate in time with beat, love story, natural scenes, showing something different to other music videos.

When listening to our song choice, what are your first thoughts for the music video?
- Close up of the guitar scenes, lip syncing sometimes avoiding camera, natural surroundings, showing times when the relationship was present.
- Guitar present in most scenes to help represent the indie acoustic, love story shown throughout, lip syncing, gradually a build up towards an ending.
- Strumming of the guitar, love story, good times.