When i was your man audience research

 By looking at the original music video for the song i am using for my courework i was able to look through the comments to try and distinguish the target audeince for the song/artist. I was able to see that the majority of fans of the song were female with a large portion being teenagers. I was able to gauge the general age of a commenter by looking at their profile picture, the ages were somewhat assumed but i am aiming for a general audience than a specific age group.

These comments demostrate the type of people who enjoy and comment on the song. As you can see they are mostly females who are praising the song for its content rather than its artist - although there were several comments directed at the performance of the artist.




There are however some exceptions to this fan base as shown by the next comment.

Here you can say that a fan of the song is actually a middle aged man - the complete contrast of the majority of listeners. This shows that even though the music is intended to please a certain demographic, it is still somewhat a "pop" song and therefore can and will appeal to the masses. It is the not same level of pop adopted by artists such as Carly Rae Jepsen in which it aims to be catchy enough to gain thousands of hours on music channels and radio stations. Instead it has a main target audience with the potential for other people to enjoy the music who would not normally associate with the song.


By looking through the comments i was also able to see that some fans liked the song because of the personal connection they felt with the lyrics. This shows a seperate fan base in those who can relate to the song and its lyrics. Because of this i will need to reflect this in my video so that it appears more personal and not just a performance video (even though the original video is like this and proves very effective).

I will use the information gathered here to shape my music video and ancillary products to best appeal to this target audience which mainly consists of teenage females.

Digipak Research

 

Spiritualized is a British rock group who released the album "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space". They focus on produced more "alternate" and "space" sub-genres of rock. Because of their unique artificial style they have designed a digipack to compliment this. The digipack for the album is designed and presented as packaging for a type of medication or tablet. The box art contains all the expected details for the packaging of a tablet including dosage, warnings, ingredients and various dates of expiration. The main colour scheme of the digipak is that of white and blue. Both of these are very "medical colours" in that they are the colours that are associated with the likes of hospitals as well as sharing the same house style with real life medicine packaging.

More interesting however is the packaging of the CD. Once the box is open the CD is presented in plastic case covered in a layer of foil, representing that of a pill. To access the Cd requires the person to break the foil in order to extract the disc and is therefore not just for the appearance. This type of packaging offers more interaction for the consumer as it is also further compliments the theme of the album and digipak design. So it is here that it provides advantages as it offers a more engaging experience for the consumer opposed to a standard plastic case with the disc inside. The design of the packaging help it to attract more people as it stands out from other album cases. It also helps to identify the artist as the digipak is as abstract as the music produced by the band. A disadvantage of the digipak however is the fact that once the foil is breached you can never seal it again, this leads to the potential of damaging the disc as it offers no real protection, therefore on a practical level there are flaws - these are however largely outweighed by the advantages offered by the style and design of the digipak.








The next digipak hugely differs from the one produced by Spiritualized. This is the digipak is for the album "AM" by "Arctic Monkeys". Compared to the previous design it is quite simple in appearance but this may make it more effective as the cover is used to establish a link between the album and the song. The leading song for the album is titled "Do i wanna know" which was released as a single prior to the album. The video features several lines which wave in correspondence to the playing of the various instruments. In the video the image of the cover is often present and this therefore acts as a link between the album and the song. This helps to add an identity to the song as well as construct a house style in which the band can then use for their other products.

The digipak is otherwise pretty standard in that on the back it contains the names of all the songs included in their running order as well as the name of the band. When opened it also contains a photo of the band members together, further reinforcing the connection between band song and album. Although a lot simpler this digipak relies more on the already established fanbase and the assosiation between the house style "logo" and the products.








The photo of the band also matches the style of the album cover by being in black and white and fading into the rest of the cover. It shows all the band members clearly and together so easy association can be made.