A PowerPoint discussing the responses for a questionnaire filled out by 17-18 year olds about their music and music video preferences.

1. Audience Research
Analysis
Alice Bailey

2. Age and Gender of Participants
In my audience research questionnaire, I had 2 more male than female
participants, which is good because there’s a fairly equal amount of male and
female respondents as in there aren’t too many males and there aren’t too many
females. The male participants were also varied in age, 3 of them being 18, the
rest 17, however each and every female in my results were aged 17.
When carrying out my questionnaire, I aimed to get a more varied age within the
male and females, however the vast majority of my respondents were 17 years
old. This is a negative because although the intended age gap didn’t have much of
a range, the results will include opinions of respondents who are all the same age
(minus three 18 year olds).

3. Preferred type of music video
My results showed that the majority of my respondents
preferred a mixed music video. I found this surprising as
many popular music videos I’ve seen are either performance
or narrative music videos. I can see this in the results
however because minus the mixed music video result, the
favoured type was a performance music video.
The results from this question gives me an insight into what
my target audience would prefer in terms of the type of music
video and so I may carry on to produce a mixed music video,
having abstract, narrative and performance in one piece.

4. The Importance of Music Videos
When answering the question ‘How important is a music video to you?’, a clear
majority of respondents chose the answer ‘It depends on the song’. The second
most popular answer was ‘Not really, I can listen to a piece of music without the
video’. This doesn’t necessarily surprise me as there are a few videos which either
don’t link well to the song or destroy the song. Despite this, there are plenty of
music videos which link up very well to the meaning and lyrics and make the song
better.
From this data, I’ll need to think carefully about what I involve in my music video
for my chosen song because the vast majority of my target audience answered the
question with ‘It depends on the song’.

5. Influence of Social Media
When asked if social media had an influence on whether the individual viewed and
shared a music video, 56.7% of my respondents answered ‘No’. When asked to
give a reason for their answer, around 37% of my respondents stated that they
didn’t care about sharing the content on social media and would much rather
prefer to watch their music videos from websites such as YouTube. A further 36%
who were a part of those who answered ‘Yes’ to the main question mentioned the
viral success and popularity of their favourite artists and their music videos, and
stated that they were fond of being able to share it with others. This shows me that
there’s an equal mix of those who wish to increase the popularity of their artists
through social media and those who would rather just watch the videos.

6. Discovery of Music Video Releases
One of the questions in my questionnaire was ‘How do you find out about an artist
releasing a music video?’. The three choices were through social media, through
YouTube, and through friends. When looking at the results, there is a clear
majority of votes. These votes counted as half of the respondents and were for
YouTube. There is a small difference between the votes for social media and
friends, which tells me that most of my target audience use YouTube to watch
their artist’s videos.

7. Music Videos for Movie Soundtracks
Another question on my questionnaire asked
respondents if they would be more intrigued to watch a
music video if it were part of a movie soundtrack. An
unsurprising majority said that they would indeed be
more intrigued to watch a music video if it were part of a
movie soundtrack.
This shows me that my target audience is likely to prefer
if my chosen soundtrack was from a movie. This is
because the majority of them will be more intrigued to
actually watch my music video. I may not be able to do
this however due to copyright and usage issues in terms
of the soundtrack itself and clips from the movie.

8. Collaborations
When asked if they thought collaborations helped an artist reach a wider
audience, all but one respondent said ‘Yes’. 27% of these explained that
collaborations will help promote the artists and give them more recognition, 60%
repeated that a collaboration will help the artists reach a wider audience and
fanbase, and the remainder gave no answers.

9. Unsuitable Content
Of all 30 respondents, 7 didn’t give an answer to this question. Those
who did mostly agreed that scenes of sex and nudity were deemed
unsuitable to feature in a music video. The second best answer was
‘No’, which showed that the second majority of the respondents thought
that there wasn’t anything unsuitable for a music video. There was a
mention of drug use in one of the respondent’s answers.
This shows me that most of my audience would likely not mind if there
were to be any violence in the music video (as long as it’s not extreme
or excessive). My results have also suggested that I don’t include any
form of sex or nudity in my music video as over half of my target
audience voted against the suitability of sex and nudity in music videos.

10. Advisory and Restrictions on Music Videos
The last two questions asked the respondents about age restrictions and parental advisory for music
videos. The first asked respondents if they thought that there should be parental advisory on music videos
and the second asked respondents if they thought that there should be age restrictions for music videos
on social media platforms. 50-60% of all respondents said that it depends on the music video, for both age
restrictions on social media platforms and parental advisory on the music video itself. However,
surprisingly, there were more respondents who said ‘No’ to both of the questions. I thought that this was
surprising because considering the varied ages of the people who listen to music and use social media, I
would have personally thought that restrictions and advisory would be important.
This tells me that my target audience are almost unbothered by content and restrictions of music videos
and also gives me the impression that if music videos have sexual or overly violent content, my audience
would prefer if they were restricted and/or had an advisory notice and that videos which are mild in
comparison to the sexual and violent videos my audience would prefer if there wasn’t any advisory or
restrictions.From these results I believe that I won’t need to put a restriction for the music video I will be
making because the only thing to restrict in the song would be the bad language, and my target audience
appears to be OK with that, as they didn’t state that it was a problem in the previous question.