Finding Pop/Dance/Alternative

Finding Pop/Dance/Alternative on Prezi

Audience Research - Festivals

Festival Research

Over the last decade, music festrivals have rose in popularity - this is a result of several factors, including the rise of social media - this is one of the key factors. Popular music festivals such as Latitude are often discussed on Facebook or Twitter - this word of mouth advertises the fetsival among its main target audience - 16-24 year olds. This age group is also the main consumer of social media - these things combine to increase the popularity of music festivals such as Latitude.

The poster for the
2012 Latitude festival

The posters advertising music festivals are a vital part of the marketing of the festival. Different posters are clearly advertising their respective music festival in a different way - this is usually down to the nature of the music festival.

The poster for Latitude is clearly trying to market the social and family aspects of the festival - the poster has an image of a rural, safe-looking area that invites you in. The art and border around the poster also makes it look elegant and traditional. Also, the poster does not only display information about the musical entertainment at the event - it shows you information about the poetry, comedy and art events at the festival.

Our Chosen Festival for our Band

The festival that would suit our chosen band (The Colours) best would be the Reading festival. This is mainly due to the mainstream nature of our band and their music. The genre of The Colours' music is also similar to the genre of the bands performing at the Reading festival.

The poster marketing the 2012 Reading festival

 

A big part of how the Reading festival promotes itself is through its poster. This poster has kept the same design since the conception of the Reading festival, with it only changing when colour was introduced to the poster - it has kept the iconic yellow design and red and black font since it introduced colour. This continuity allows people to instantly know what the poster is and what it is advertising - which allows them to focus on the acts and other information on the poster.

Lots of the bands featured are mainstream bands that many people recognise - whether they are music fans or not. Other festivals (e.g. Download) are focused on an audience that wants to see the music with like-minded fans - they are there for the music rather than the experience.



The poster for
the 2012 Download festival

The timing of the festival is also important - as the festival appeals to the mass market, staging the festival in the summer holidays gives people the opportunity to attend the festival - if it was staged in the time of the year when most people are working or at school/college/sixth form/university, then these people would be put off of attending the festival.

The Reading festival's website is vital to the marketing of the festival - social media is obviously important to the advertisement of the festial, and this is clear when you go onto the website. You immediately see symbols that link you to social applications - Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and forums. These are all ways for people to connect and discuss the festival - which further promotes the Reading festival.

Research into Target Audience

Genre's Audience

The genre for our music video (Tonight I let You Go by The colours) is Pop/Alternative/Dance. The audience for these genres are similar in some ways -  for example, the age groups that mainly consume these types of music are quite similar.

Pop

The main audience of pop music is the mainstream audience of 16-25 year olds. There is commonly a voyeuristic representation of women in this genre, as they often wear revealing costumes - for example, look at the images of Britney Spears and Rihanna above. The representation of males in this genre is quite diverse, as it can be quite casual (e.g. the t-shirt and jeans of One Direction above) or quite formal and stylish (e.g. the formal hat and suit of Bruno Mars above).

Pop (coming from the word "popular") music originated in the form we now know in the 1950's when it was derived from rock and roll music. Pop music can be quite varied, as it often takes parts of other genres into its songs. However, there are some core features that define pop music:

-Short to medium length songs
-Basic writing format - usually the verse-chorus structure
-Repeated choruses
-Melodic tunes
-Catchy "hooks"

Alternative

Alternative music is also known as alternative rock (or alt rock) and is a genre of rock music that came from independent music in the 1980s and became popular in the 1990s. Alternative rock is a type of music that differs greatly from other genres in terms of its sound, social context and regional roots. It became more popular by the end of the 1980s due to publicity mainly through magazines, college radio airplay and word of mouth. Once the diversity of alternative rock music had been publicised, many new genres within the genre were born, including gothic rock, industrial rock and noise pop.

Before Nirvana and the grunge and Britpop movements that made alternative music much more popular in the 1990s, alternative musicians were mainly signed by independent record labels and rarely received much attention form the mainstream audience compared to the other genres of pop and rock music that were popular at the time.

Fans of alternative music can be any age - it is quite a niche genre so people in their twenties, who have passed the mainstream pop/rock music stage, are probably the main audience. These fans are probably quite unique and independent in terms of there style, just like the alternative musicians.

Dance

Dance music is primarily trying to cause or supplement dancing. It can be part of a large musical arrangement or played on its own. The main categories of dance music are live and recorded dance music.

The origins of dance music are in old folk dancing and communal dance music, for example the kind played at old square dances in the USA. The origins of Brazilian dance music are in things such as Samba, contrastingly.

Dance music fans nowadays are usually relatively young - 18-25 years olds. These fans are the kinds of people who would regularly go to nightclubs or gigs - e.g. for Skrillex, pictured above. These nightclubs are usually pictured with strobe lights and quite intense performances. The fans of dance music are often thought of as wearing modern, trendy clothes that fit in with their nightclub environment.

Lyrics

The lyrics of our song basically tell a story of a person wanting something, reflecting on it, and then letting it go, as you can see in these lyrics from the start and end of our selected song:

First verse:

Your empty promises
Stop filling up my mind while my loves' away
Temptation calls me
To this and loveless fools believe
Their guilty hearts still bleed
But their cold lifeless heart beats wear them out

Last verse:

You know I want to be on my own tonight
I just keep on running
You know I want to be on my own tonight
Tonight I let you go

Tonight I let you go

Tonight I let you go

As you can see, there is a progression of emotions that is evident in these lyrics. This progression is the kind of thing commonly seen in pop music - a story is often told in pop songs. This shows that our lyrics could appeal to the pop music - the emotional lyrics such as "Their guilty hearts still bleed" also appeal to the partly teenage age demographic the pop genre targets. These people are often evolving emotionally as a person so these kinds of lyrics could make the song appeal more to them.