Audience feedback is important for creating media products that appeal to the intended audience. The author learned this through receiving feedback on their niche post-punk music genre projects from a variety of audiences using different methods. Feedback informed decisions like including drugs/parties in the music video and using a physical/chemical theme for projections. It also directly influenced the record label name, digipak color scheme, album name, and lead song. The author found feedback an effective tool for developing their ideas.

1. EVALUATION QUESTION 3
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

2. WHY IS AUDIENCE FEEDBACK IMPORTANT?
Audience feedback plays a huge role in the research and planning of creating my media
products. As I am trying to appeal to a particular audience, it’s important that I listen to what
that audience wants and what would attract them to my music video and ancillary tasks. My
media products are useless if they don’t attract views and in order to imitate legitimate
products they need to have the same level of focus around drawing attention. A difficulty I
faced was that my genre is fairly niche and not as current as genre’s such as pop and indie.
This not only meant that it was difficult to some extent to analyse other videos, because
technology was not as advanced when post punk was prominent, occurring around 1878 and
1984, but also because it made it difficult to reach out to audiences that listen to that style of
music. Feedback is more meaningful if its from actual listeners of that genre not just music
listeners in general, and most people I gained feedback from had never even listened to post
punk so some of it was guesswork. However, I still found audience feedback helpful and it
definitely acted as a guide for me throughout my work by informing me what majorities
would prefer using qualitative and quantitative methods.

3. VARIETIES OF METHODS
Rather than reuse the same method of gaining
views again and again, I tried to use a few
different ways of doing so. Firstly I used two
questionnaires, one for my music video and one
for my digipak. Within these, I also alternated
between closed and open questions so that I had
a chance to be specific about more direct
questions like album title or digipak colour
scheme, but also gain more personal and
detailed responses on topics like themes, which
are open to a broad range of ideas and
interpretations.

4. VARIETIES OF METHODS
I used technology to gain feedback also. Text messages
are used on a constant everyday basis and are a quick,
really easy way to reach out to people in an instant. I
used these often.
I also used social media to gain audience feedback. I feel
this is important to do as social media plays such a huge
part in todays society and is a good way of reaching out
to a variety of people virtually. I used social media app
twitter to make a poll and ask a question about digipak.
This was an advantage because not only did it show
statistically show the results easily, but also allowed
people to vote anonymously.
I also used Facebook to create a focus group and gain
responses all in one chat from my friends.

5. VARIETY OF AUDIENCES
It was important for me to convey opinions and perspectives of a range of audiences. It would not be an accurate representation
to only reach out to my close group of friends. People tend to stick with peers of similar interests so my own social group may be
closed to a variety of outlooks. Therefore I consciously attempted to reach a range of groups that would be interested in a variety
of music.
Firstly, I branched out age wise. Although I would have liked to
interact with an older audience, other than my own mum I
didn’t really have access to a proper group, so instead I went
downwards to an audience two years below my own. I gave out
my initial music video questionnaire to my own class in school,
but I also asked for feedback from a class two years below mine
in school on one of my actual video drafts. This also gave me an
impersonal advantage as I didn’t know them which is often more
useful because the feedback is objective.
Secondly, I tried to ask both boys and girls. I create a focus group
of social media site Facebook to ask both boys and girls what I
should name my record label, as my school is female only. This
method also gave me regional variety because the audience on
Facebook are based in a range of locations around the UK
whereas people in my school are all within a certain radius.

6. HOW MY FEEDBACK GUIDED ME/WHAT I LEARNED
My audience feedback definitely played a role in a lot of the decisions I made. For
example in my music video, drugs and a party scene and city lights were suggested
through the digipak, and although I had already planned to use these ideas, it assured
me that I was on the right track and gave me confidence that other people shared my
vision. The ideas for the style of my artist also correlated with my own ideas. In terms
of inspiring new ideas, it was actually a piece of feedback suggesting I have a
physical/chemical theme that inspired me to use this for my projection content. I knew I
wanted to do something with a projection over Robyn but hadn’t decided what sort of
clip I’d play over her. After this suggestion I used youtube to find microscopic clips and
I’m really happy with how it went.
It also influenced my digipak right down to the name of my
record label which I used my focus group for. My
questionnaire defined how I chose my colour scheme, and
how I named my album and with what song. Audience
feedback is clearly an effective tool in developing my own
ideas into products.

7. HOW MY FEEDBACK GUIDED ME/WHAT I LEARNED
It also influenced my digipak right down to the name of my record label which I
used my focus group for. My questionnaire defined how I chose my colour
scheme, and how I named my album and with what song. Audience feedback is
clearly an effective tool in developing my own ideas into products.