audience case study

1. Audience Case Study

2. Mumford and Sons – The Cave
• The band Mumford and Sons formed in 2007, they fall
under the English Folk and Alternative Rock genre.
• Their third single ‘The Cave’ was released in 2010 on
their debut album ‘sigh no more’, The track sold
1,657,000 digital copies by September 2012. The Song
entered the charts at No.11 and peaked at No.2. The
album won the Album of the Year award at the Brit
Awards in 2011.
• In may 2012 the song featured on a ‘lastminute.com’
advert and on the ITV World Cup coverage in 2010.
• The track featured on the first episode of the fourth
series of ‘Skins’ which was the first time that the video
was predominantly broadcast to its target audience of
16-26 year olds

3. Primary Audience Demographic - Age
• From researching Mumford and Sons audience
demographic I found that their target audience is
mainly young people with an average age of 24
• The folk genre have resulted in the band having a
nice audience, however, the boom in social media
has promoted the band across social platforms.
Their inclusion in print media allows them to
appeal to a mass audience.
• The members of the band are in their late 20s
which could attract those of a similar age group.

4. Primary Audience Demographic – Age
(compared to my music video)
• Much like The Cave music video, my music
video An Acquired Taste has the same target
audience of 16-26. This is because of the up
beat nature of the track.
• Our target audience Is also young people as
our video includes a young girl of which the
audience can relate to.

5. Primary Audience Demographic -
Gender
• The video for The Cave is not aimed at either
gender, although due to the composition of
the band being male, men may be able to
relate to identify with their style more.
• Although, research into target audience has
found that 69% of their audience is male and
32% of their audience is female. This means
that most of their audience is male however
their audience is very much unisex.

6. Primary Audience Demographic –
Gender (in relation to my music video)
• Like Mumford and Sons our band Kings and
Crows are made up purely of men, this means
that more men are likely to be able to relate
to them than female.
• However, our video consists of a female
character making it easier for a female to
relate and identify with.

7. Media Interests
• Due to the nature of my audience being within
the age bracket of 16-24 social networking
sites are a huge part of daily life, this makes it
the perfect platform for artists to update
information on upcoming events and new
music updates.
• Music sites such as soundcloud will also be
used in order to get an initial reception for
new music.

8. Reception Theory
• Reception theory is a version of reader response
literary theory that emphasizes each particular reader's
reception or interpretation in making meaning from a
literary text.
• Producers of music videos may choose to highlight
significant codes and conventions of genre, this is in
order to live up to audience expectation which will
appeal to the target audience.
• Stuart Hall, suggested that the audience don’t accept a
text, instead they interpret the text based on their own
life experiences and cultural background.

9. Gratification Theory
• Audiences are made up of individuals who consume
different media texts for a variety of reasons.
• Lasswell suggested that media texts have the following
functions; for surveillance, for correlation, for
entertainment and for cultural transmittion.
• In 1974, Blulmer and Katz revised and expanded a list
of reasons as to why individuals use a text; Diversion
(escape from everyday), Personal relationships
(substituting family programs for family life, Identity
(learning behaviours and relating yourself to texts) and
Surveillance (information necessary for living e.g. news
and weather reports)

10. In relation to my music video
• My music video emphasises Lasswell’s idea of
media texts having a specific function, my
music video’s purpose id to entertain the
viewer
• My music video also relates to Blulmer and
Katz’s idea of identity. This idea is where an
audience learns from the behaviors that they
see and relate themselves to the characters
which are found in the text. In our video the
audience can relate to the young female and
her desire to escape from reality

11. In relation to my music video
• My music video also relates to an idea from
Stuart Hall where the audience can interpret
their own meaning of my music video based
on their own life experiences.
• My music video targets young white females,
this is because it matches the identity of the
main character in the video, this makes it
easier for the audience to relate to the themes
in my video