1. Market Research Analysis
The purpose of my market research was to obtain quantitative results which identify key areas of
music videos what people expect or look out for. This is so that I can include these areas in my own
video. I asked a range of people around my college 10 questions about music genre and music
videos. I ensured that I asked a wide variety of people in my college, so that my results were not
representative of just one music genre. The first question I asked my participants was ‘How old are
you?’ This is so I could get an idea of what age range like what genres. However, as my questionnaire
was given out in my college all of my results collected consisted of people in the category 17-25.
However, this is the intended target audience for my music video so the results collected are in fact
very useful. The second question that I asked people was ‘Which gender are you?’ I did this so that I
could establish which genders like which genres of music.
Which gender are you?
Male
Female
90% of the people that I asked were Female and 10% were male. This is reflective of my target
audience as I will be doing a song from a female artist, therefore females will most likely be my niche
audience. The third question that I asked was ‘What is your occupation?’ This was to establish
whether my target audience was mostly students, and whether they had a part time job. I wanted to
know whether they had a job as most students have job in retail or jobs as waiters of waitresses.
These are all industries that usually play music to entertain customers whilst shopping or eating. This
would influence a person’s music taste as if a person listened to certain genres of music repeatedly
they may learn to like this music, or they may start to hate the genre as it becomes boring and
repetitive. Out of the range of people I asked, all were students and 40% had part time jobs. Another
question I asked in relation to this is ‘What is your income?’ I asked this to see whether this had an
effect on where a person watched music videos. For example, if a person had a very high income this
may make a difference to where they watch music videos as they may have new technology which
enables people the watch them on this. All of the people I asked earned £0-10,000 per annum. This
therefore concluding that most of the people I asked would watch music videos in the same place,
for example on a gadget such as an iPad.
I then asked the question ‘What are your favourite genres of music?’ This allowed people to tick
more than one if necessary. The results that I collected indicated that Pop was the most popular
genre that people listened to, with hip-hop being the second most popular genre. Therefore I and
my group decided to choose the genre of pop
2. What are your favourite
genres of music?
Pop
R&B
Rock
Hip-Hop
Blues
Jazz
Dance
I then asked people how many gigs they attend in one year. I asked this as the responses I collected
will indicate how much people are influenced by music. I found that most people attended 3 gigs a
year, this indicates that the people I asked were highly influenced by music and it is a major aspect
of their lives.
How many gigs do you
attend on average in a year?
0
1
2
3
4
5+
Another question which I asked my participants was ’Do you watch music videos?’ My participant’s
response was that 80% of them did watch music videos, whilst 20% did not. For the next question I
asked ‘If you answered yes to the above, where do you normally watch music videos?’ I included the
options: TV, Music Channels, You Tube, Facebook, Websites and Other.’ The most popular options
chosen were TV, Music Channels and You Tube. These responses indicate where I could broadcast
my video and also gives me an idea of the people who will be watching the video. Another related
question I asked was ‘What do you expect to see in a music video?’ I got a wide range of responses
these were: Something unique different to the rest of music videos, People, Lights, Dance, A live
band or a story, Music, A storyline.
The final question which I asked was ‘What are the names of these artists?’ I asked this to see if the
people that I asked could recognise popular bands from each genre of music from a picture of their
face. This would indicate that they have perhaps seen their face when watching a music video. The
pictures I put on my questionnaire where pictures of the artists: The Script, Ed Sheeran, Ellie
Goulding, REM, Jay-Z and Metallica. The people which answered this question left a blank space
3. when they were unsure of the artist. The most blank spaces were left for the bands REM and
Metallica. This left the artists The Script, Ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran and Jay-Z. My results indicate
that most people recognise bands from the music charts and the genre of pop and R&B. Therefore
me and my group came to the conclusion that for our video we would choose the genre of pop as it
is the most popular genre liked my our intended target audience.
When completed, my coursework should attract people of the ages 17-25 who like the pop genre.
This can be applied effectively to Bulmer and Katz’s theory of users and gratifications as the video
can build a personal relationship with the artist in my video. For example for our song Turning Tables
it is quite a sad song so a personal relationship is built as the audience feel sorry for the artist in the
video so therefore establish a connection with the artist.The video also relates to surveillance as it
helps the audience escape from their everyday troubles and watch a video based on somebody
else’s troubles. This as a result could make the audience feel better as they think that their problems
are only tiny compared to the artist on the video. As our video is about our artist getting over her ex-
boyfriend lots of people may also find themselves reflected in the text, therefore adhering to Bulmer
and Katz theory as this fits the category of personal identity.
The idea of personal identity also fits to Stuarts Hall theory as we encoded the idea of a break up
into out video and the audience may decode this as advice on how to get over their break up and
move on. Another element we will try to encode in our video is the idea of hatred. For example, we
plan to burn a photograph of the artist and her old boyfriend. This is so that the audience decode
this as the artist getting over her former lover as he is no longer worthy of her affection. This will
also be decoded as a sense of love turning in to hatred because she perhaps did not want the
relationship to come to end but it had to.