Audience Research

To start my audience research into who I will be aiming my productions towards, I investigated the typical audience profiles of people who enjoy or will enjoy the music of my artist, Abandoning Sunday.

On his website, Thomas (Abandoning Sunday) lists his musical influences to include bands such as Jimmy Eat World, Yellowcard, The Goo Goo Dolls, The Killers and The Icarus Account. As these bands are listed as influences, Thomas' musical style will bare some resemblance, and hence I could list some fans of these bands as part of my target audience and get them to participate in some questionnaires so I can determine how to make my productions more appealing to them.

Abandoning Sunday is very active on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I looked through some of the bands followers on Twitter and determined the types of people who listen to my artist - I learned that in fact the band appeal to a wide audience, mainly of ages 13 upwards to young adult, and some older listeners who may be more familiar with the bands influences (Jimmy Eat World & Yellowcard have been about for over a decade).

From the younger fans "bios" on Twitter, I can gain an understanding of the other bands that fans listen to. Interestingly, when Abandoning Sunday is mentioned, he is amongst bands of different genres entirely- namely bands such as Bring Me The Horizon, Pierce The Veil and Sleeping With Sirens, who are typical of the more hardcore, bordering "emo" genre- perhaps due to the somewhat sad nature of the lyrics. Furthermore, fans of post-hardcore bands such as Architects, While She Sleeps and Counterparts  are following my artist, and the musical styles of these bands and Abandoning Sunday could not be more different. In other cases, fans have listed other favourite acts in their bios as pop punk bands such as The Story So Far, Blink-182 and A Day To Remember as well as rock bands like You Me At Six and Green Day. I list Abandoning Sunday as similar to Deaf Havana, Lonely the Brave, The Script and You Me At Six - showing that the band are accessible to fans of various genres, and it will be interesting to see how hardcore, pop punk and rock fans views combine/differ in questionnaires.

Other interests from my audience include singer/songwriters, perhaps more in favour of the acoustic side of the band, and a lot of his followers are gamers or small YouTubers who upload content to the website, and a few skaters. The band hence also appeals to a variety of lifestyles, for instance skating is seen as synonymous with the pop punk genre, among others, but that doesn't mean that all skaters have to listen to a certain music taste.

The older audiences don't give much away in their biographies on the Social Networking site Twitter but from Facebook, mainly older audiences appear to have seen him play live in small house gigs or in pubs, as that is where he plays the majority of his concerts in America, and most of the comments "You were great today in []" come from people in their twenties or upwards. Hence, when I am getting my study group for questionnaires, it will include:

- Fans of different music genres: Acoustic, Pop Punk, Hardcore, Rock
- A mixture of teenagers, young adults and over 18s
- People of different lifestyles: Working, Studying, different interests.

In these questionnaires, I will look to see which aspects of music videos my audience prefers in this genre, and which styles of digipak appeal to them more at first glance, as well as other aspects that will be vital to the production of my pieces.