R+P Post 4: Audience groups of interest

In order to create a successful artist and release a song that does well it is important to understand the audience you are appealing to.This means knowing their age range, personality and life style choices in order to cater to their specific uses and gratifications.

Age

A survey in 2016 found that whilst music was most important to 13-15 year olds, over all the age groups surveyed there wasn't actually that much of difference. 

Bar chart of survey findings

From this survey, I would say that the age of a core TA should focus on teenagers and young adults up to mid twenties as they place the most importance on music and are therefore most likely to engage with it. Having said this, as the percentage drop across the ages is very small, this shows that music is a universal pleasure and that to get as big appeal as possible it is important to not discredit or overlook the older age ranges, especially as they are the ones most likely to buy physical copies of the song or legally download it, making more money for the label.

Consumption

With advancements in technology, many people access music through the internet from websites such as YouTube, through paid streaming services like Spotify or through specific phone apps such as Apple Music. This can be seen in a 2016 survey which found that 71% of internet users were active consumers of music.

Illegal consumption of music has also become a big problem with the advances in technology. Stream ripping is currently the biggest infringement of songs' copyright and a survey found that 30% of internet users do it and this rises to 49% among 16-24 year olds.

The table below shows the break down in copyright infringement by demographic in the last 6 months of 2016.

This data shows a need for awareness of music consumers habits and the need, especially to appeal to younger ages, of online streaming, with no adverts and a wide range of choice. This was also highlighted when Taylor Swift received backlash in 2014 when she refused to release her 1989 album on Spotify and took her other music off.

Research

I also spoke to a group of people of 16-50 years old to get an idea of what musc they liked and how they consumed it.

The table below sums up the audience research I did.

From my research I can see that Pop and R&B are the most popular and woul dbe a good choice for our project.