Audience Research

Target audiences for music videos in general have changed over time. The demand for more and more to be produced over the years has become a necessity for artists and therefore with more competition the content of the videos have began to challenge the original, safe live performance music videos. They are now based around post modern content that reflects today's society and therefore changes the target audience.

As times have changed, so have the representations within music videos to reflect the stereotypes of society, which affects the age of target audiences. For example, the older generation will not be as familiar and engaged with the current generation portrayed in many music videos and therefore will find them less appealing and in some cases offensive. This is because of the sexual content and drug/alcohol abuse has become a popular issue within music videos as the more youthful generations can relate to it. For example: Wild house party's, with half naked women, alcohol and intoxicated people can be found in 'I gotta a feeling' by the Black eyed peas. Fighting and violence can be found in 'End credits - chasing status ft plan B' and a lot of sexual content, drugs, alcohol, violence and even animal cruelty in another chasing status video called 'Pieces'. All this will appeal to the younger generation aged around 16- 26 and not the older generation which shows a dramatic change in target audiences.

No matter what genre of music, there is always an audience that is targeted through the songs, ideologies, trends and lifestyles of an artist. However with the release of more and more hybrid genres it has also created more niche(concentrated) audiences who particularly like a new sound. This again breaks down general audiences into more specific/targeted audiences.

My music video will appeal to a youthful audience as Bloc party have created a postmodern, hybrid of genres but still not the majority as the slight indie genre will attract people who consider themselves to be individual and different. However it could be argued that they are still a stereotype by following a set of ideologies and trends in becoming an 'indie'. Bloc party themselves though have broken the mould and become individual. This is because in essence, the music itself is very individual and not really based upon other bands. It is a hybrid of alternative dance, rock, pop and punk revival. The lyrics are also very abstract and can create many different meanings for the audience and not just plain, obvious lyrics like the majority of other indie bands. Also the band is not generic as it is multicultural consisting of Black, White and Oriental backgrounds which is very different to find within the indie genre. This too breaks the mould and emphasises their individuality.

A lot of the content in bloc party's videos are performance based with shots of the band playing guitars and drums which appeals to their audience as they can view their talent and indie fashion (usually consisting of scruffy hair, skinny jeans, tight tops etc) However some of their music videos have abstract narratives such as 'Mercury' and ' flux' which have no real meaning, like some of the lyrics in their songs too which makes them different. The video to the song i have chosen 'So here we are' by bloc party has inspired me as it uses very creative shots and time lapse which i hope to use in my own music video. Just like the original it will be narrative based but I won't have shots of the artists themselves. Instead I will be using two actors to lead the video, but i will use shots of random scenery and montage clips to maintain the abstract theme in the song. However my own video will slightly change the target audience. It will still appeal to a youthful generation between 16-26 but as well as having an indie audience, the visuals of my music video will open up to a general audience. This is because the concept of my music video is based around a couple breaking up which a lot of people will have experienced in their life and can relate to. If this were to be a real project as well, then this would make my music video successful as a wider audience would equal to more sales. So I will be taking into account the generic style of the the Indie genre to appeal to their current audience but also creating my own too in the process. My narrative is not in any way offensive as it is a love story which a lot of people can relate to and it would be nice to know that the older generation could enjoy my music video without feeling uncomfortable and offended by the typical content of today.