Audience Research

As part of audience research I did a focus group to get a few ideas about what my audience will enjoy and if the ideas I have to do for my music video are something that would work for my target audience.
The questions I asked were...

• Do you like music videos to follow a certain narrative or do you prefer them to be abstract videos? (As my music video is not going to follow a set narrative it will be quite abstract, I wanted to find out if this is something that my target audience still enjoy watching... I found that my target audience think it depends on the song that the video is for and how you make it work without a narrative) 
• Do you think songs with a more influential meaning need to follow more of a structure than other songs? (as the song I have chosen to do is quite an influential song, I wanted to find out whether my target audience think that for them to enjoy the music video it needs to follow a structure)
• Has a memorable music video ever made you want to buy an album or made you more interested in an artist? (This was not a question to find out something for my music video, I just wanted to find out in general how influential music videos can be to an audience)
• Do you like music videos that use a variety of different locations, settings, people? (As I plan on using a mixture of settings and locations in my video I wanted to find out if this is something my target audience enjoy watching, or if it is something that may put them off a song)
• Do you think music videos need to have performance aspect to them or not? (I asked this as I am not going to have performance in my song and I wanted to make sure that this is not a major aspect of a music video that my target audience look for- I found that they think it depends on the song the video is for and how else you make up for not having an aspect of performance such as miming or dancing in the video)
• For my music video I plan on doing a stop motion type film, have you ever watched any stop motion films and if so what did you think of them? (I asked this to find out how popular stop motion films are and how many people have watched them or will be up for watching them and if my approach to a music video is something that would interest people... luckily they said that it would be interesting as it is a different approach to take to it so it would be interesting to watch)

As well as a focus group, I also placed a poll on my blog and emailed all of the A2 media classes and asked if they would complete it...

To get the view of people outside of college and from a different age range I asked a group of people a series of questions via a handout questionnaire.
First there was a set that was just to find out more about them personally and their preferences when it came to music videos. I did this in order to find out more about what the audience enjoy about music videos as I am trying to appeal to a variety of people and to give me an idea about what people would want to watch in my music video.

• Male or female? (Please circle)

      Male     Female

• How old are you? (Please circle)

15-19   20-24   25-29   30-34   35+

• What would you say is your favourite genre of music? (Please circle)

Indie     Rock    Pop    Rap    RnB    Alternative    Other (Please specify)

• Do you enjoy watching music videos or would you rather just listen to the song without any visuals? (Please circle)

Enjoy watching videos    Prefer just listening to the song    Mixture of both

• If you enjoy watching music videos, what do you usually watch them on? (e.g. YouTube/MTV etc)

YouTube     MTV    Other TV Show    Other online site    Mobile App 


RESULTS...
From the 20 people I asked, there was 12 females and 8 males. The age range varied from 17-45. 
Here is a graph showing favourite genres of music...

(Series 1 indicates favourite genre of music)

(Shows that the 8 people enjoy watching music videos and 8 people like just listening to the song. Which shows that people I asked do enjoy watching videos, so if I asked the same people again to give my feedback on my finished video they won't mind watching it)

(Series 1 is which application the people I asked watched music videos on the most. From these results I can see that YouTube is the most popular thing to watch music videos on, which shows that if my music video was posted on YouTube then it will be accessible to a lot of people meaning it should get a lot of views)