How our audience consume media and how we would promote our video

If we were to create an official music video for a singer or band in real life, decisions about advertising and promotion would be essential in order to ensure that it was revealed to our target audience. This is important because if the video was promoted in the wrong places/websites then the number of views of the video would be significantly lower than they would be if the video was advertised to the correct target audience, and therefore the sales of the song would not be as successful as the artist and their team may have hoped. When creating and promoting a music video you have a responsibility to access the target audience and encourage people to watch and enjoy the video. Therefore if the music video we are creating was officially created within the industry we would have to carefully consider how our audience consume media and where would be the most successful places to advertise it.

 

In the video above I have interviewed a student in my year called Heather Scutchings, she is 18 and the A Levels she is studying are drama, photography and media studies. The questions focus on how and when she consumes media; this will help us consider how we would advertise our music video if it was to be an official video for the song.

I also did some research about the amount of time our target audience spend using different modern technologies. I found that young people,ages 13-24, spend an average of 16.7 hours a week online, excluding email, this shows that as we are targeting a teenage/young adult audience the internet will be a key place to advertise our music video. Additionally I found out that it has been suggested that teenage girls spend more time on social netoworking sites than boys, this confirms that using internet sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be successful places to promote our video because our target audience is predominantly female. It has also been estimated that on YouTube girls spend more time watching music videos whereas boys spend more time watching comedy or action short films, therefore I believe that YouTube would be a useful way to target our female teenage audience. I also discovered that young people spend an average of 13.6 hours per week watching televeision, therefore TV would also be an ideal place to advertise our video to our target audience. In addition I found out that over half of spotfy users do not pay for either unlimited or premium use, therefore over half of users listen to adverts between songs; therefore I also believe that spotify would be a suitable place to promote an atrists song, album or music video if we were to create an official video.

After carrying out these two forms of research me and Kaylee, my partner for this media project, we have come to the conclusion that the best places to advertise would be using websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. These websites are very popular amongst people within our target audience and they allow users to share, like and comment on posts, therefore if people enjoy our music video they can easily share this with their peers. Another form of promotion which we believe would be successful is during the adverts on television, from our interview with Heather we have concluded the best times to advertise would be between 5pm and 10pm as this is when the majority of our target audience are home from school and would be watching television. In addition we could advertise on Spotify and on youtube (as the video is loading) as these are both sources with the majority of music listeners use and our target audience will be very aware of.

In addition through deconstructing music videos and looking at album covers / adverts I have noticed that the majority of artists have a website where people can find pictures, videos, merch, and updates about the bands tour dates/songs/albums, in addition the majority of websites allow fans to sign up to a mailing list; this is a very useful way for bands to keep fans updated and advertise their band. An example of a website which our would be similar to is Lower Than Atlantis' website which is shown in the screen shot to the left. The address for this website is included in all of the bands advertising, such as magazine adverts, tour posters, and adverts of sites such as YouTube and Twitter. Therefore we feel that if the video we are creating was official we would always show links to the bands website in advertisements, for this reason when we create a magazine advert for the song we will ensure that a website address is included to show that if we this was an official video for the band we would show links to A Rocket To The Moon's website.

Therefore if we were to work in the industry and create an official music video for the song 'Like We Used To' by A Rocket To The Moon, we would advertise using social networking sites, magazine adverts, a website for the band and possibly television adverts in the evening, however we realise that this sort of promotion is very expensive for the majority of bands and therefore is not always an achievable way to advertise. In addition we would create video adverts to include on music websites such as SoundCloud, YouTube and Spotify as these are accessed regularly be music listeners and can be accessed on laptops, phones and newer technologies such as ipads.