Ashleigh Weir AS Media Studies: 3. Target Audience

The possible style of my target audience

All media products will have a particular target audience that they are aiming at; they specify this in many different ways: age, class, income, demographics and gender identity. As well as this, they can vary who they aim by looking at their target market’s interests and style of dress code for that group of people. After choosing my genre of witch house/drag music I realised it being a reasonably new genre it would be hard to specify a kind of person which would be my target audience. I decided to research what types of target market various music genres and thus music magazines aim at to help my understand how to specify more exactly who my target audience would be.

For example, the popular magazine NME is aimed at both genders although their readership is at 65% males. Their target audience varies from ages 16 to 34, half being aged 16-24, average age being 24. The magazine is more focused on popular indie and rock than other music, and they dress appropriately, usually suiting the dress code of bands they listen to. 45% of NME agree that they spend a lot of money on clothes and a huge 71% agree it is important to look well dressed. I think a lot of NME would buy clothes from shops such as Topman and Burton. They manage to cater for their audience by including advertisements and of course articles which appeal to them. Their adverts could be for clothes from stores mentioned above or games and food, as other than music and clothes this is what they agree to spend most time or interest in. The food they would advertise are usually snack food or things quick to eat as that is associated with student lifestyle.

Whereas the statistics are very different for a magazine such as Top of the Pops’readership are 85% girls and the age range usually falls between 11-15 years, obviously not yet having an income. The magazine looks at popular music and celeb stories and television which the readers will most like also are interested in. It focuses strictly on pop music, very much youth orientated with the use of cheesy lyrics and catch rhythms. They also use this language within their articles, and slang used by girls of that age to relate to them more such as teen jargon ‘fit or ‘phwoar’ looking at male musicians as a object or desire and women as a source of inspiration. They use bright colours on the cover to appear cheery and friendly, the use of pinks and purples are very much based on who their target audience are – young girls. Not having their own income, their clothes tastes based on that their parents would buy them, usually. The advertisements would be strictly for BBC products and television as it made by them. They would possibly by things from shops such as Claire’s Accessories etc.

A contrasting magazine would be Metal Hammer, which focuses mainly on genres within metal music, but also hard rock. 82% of their readership consists and readers are aged between 20-39. The music is portrays as quite aggressive and has violent connotations, their covers focus a lot on this, using images containing a lot of blacks and reds. It can also be seen not just a music magazine, but a lifestyle one too, as it conveys an image of alternative style and include news on musicians life as well as their music. Adverts in Metal Hammer are shown to be a significant influence on readers' purchasing, with 59% having bought products and/or services advertised in Metal Hammer and 54% have discussed an article or feature with another person. The advertise alternative clothing brands and possibly films, as well of course new music releases.

As there are very few magazines specifically looking at my chosen community for music, I had to research witch house fans myself, I looked both for facts and statistics, as well as finding possible links and making assumptions based on these. I began to look over statistics on http://last.fm from listeners of certain witch house bands looking at their age, gender and where they live as well as their favourite bands and genres of music, on their profile. From this I found fans of witch house music seem to be possibly a 60:40 mix of males to females; their ages seem to average around 19-28. They tend to be mainly from England, America or Slavic countries. There seems to be a link between witch house fans and other dark, experimental genres or music, such as chillwave, ambient and alternative, originating from the eighties.

Quite a lot of witch house bands collaborate with online stores which also have other designs not relating to the music specifically to sell their merchandise for example http://nvrmind.bigcartel.com has a collab section. From this I feel might wear a lot of the other clothes on it, leaning towards a dark, alternative dress, mainly blacks and whites, focused on glitch edited art and, like the genre itself, symbols.