As a result of the survey we carried out, several key findings emerged about the potential target audience for our music video, social media, and digipak.
Here is the link to our survey results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bYhiKBYOYb5igf1_Sxvu6ue2v9U_4vkCp8eq8Xq92RQ/edit?usp=sharing
quantitative data
The audience was mainly made of “Gen-Z”, with 62% of respondents falling between the ages of 13-18. Additionally, 67.1% of respondents were female, perhaps indicating a significant interest in music videos that may cater to young women’s interests.
The fact that a significant portion of our audience noted that they have no preferred music genre/multiple preferred music genres made me a little more confident in our decision to use alternative/indie as our chosen genre.
34.2% of the sample seemed to be fans of hybrid music videos that are a mix of concept-based, narrative-based, and performance-based. This was also promising as I, too, am drawn to music videos that are a mixture of narrative and abstraction, something Esha and I could now confidently consider as serious options for our music video’s structure at this point.
A large majority of respondents (57%) seemed to consider a music video’s impact as being contingent upon “aesthetically-pleasing visuals,” which was understandable considering music videos barely have around 2 to 5 minutes typically to evoke some sort of promising reaction from an audience, and appealing to their visual senses seems to be one of the most effective ways of doing so—something we had to keep in our minds constantly while planning our video’s mise-en-scene, editing, and camerawork.
An overwhelming majority of 87.3% confirmed that they use Instagram to keep up with updates regarding their favourite artists and bands—a promising revelation since Instagram is what we were mainly considering to use as our primary social media account for the music promotion package. Some respondents also underlined the diversity of our sample, underscoring that it can definitely be considered generalisable and accurately representative to a certain extent, e.g. one answered with “weverse” (a social media platform dedicated to K-pop idols and groups) to this question.
The survey also revealed that a majority of people prefer to own artists’ merchandise in the form “a product with album lyrics on it” and/or “product featuring an illustration inspired by the album’s songs and themes.” (Notes From Future Tashfa: this helped me greatly in designing the graphics and illustrations that Esha then used to make the fake-merch we posted about on our artist’s social media; in other words, our project was substantially shaped by our primary and secondary research.)
Album covers that were the most popular among the respondents were mostly the ones that feature graphic design elements and illustrations heavily, such as Wiped Out by The Neighbourhood and Z by SZA.
The one cover art which was the most popular among these gained the favour of a whopping 50.6%:
(Notes From Future Tashfa: This single cover art heavily inspired my decision to incorporate a black border into our digipak.)
qualitative data:
I included some optional qualitative questions in our questionnaire that intended to collect qualitative data and expand the horizons of our audience research by not limiting the responses our audience could give us.
Is there anything specific you dislike seeing in music videos?
The answers to this question highlighted everything we hoped to avoid in our music video. Some of the most common answers were some version of the objectification of women and sexualisation of all genders. One respondent went all out to highlight the following: “objectification, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, all the phobias, ableism, religious stereotyping hmmm.” Dislike for the manifestation of the male gaze in music videos was also widespread. All of these answers confirmed that our audience members, with their dislike of harmful representation, seem to be politically aware and would appreciate an alternative/indie music video that reflects that.
Name an album that has a cover art which you consider one of your favourites. Outline at least one reason why you find it appealing.
Although I wasn’t expecting a lot of people to answer an in-depth question like the one above, a surprising majority did leave rather insightful answers (42/79 people).
Notably, some respondents mentioned that they liked album covers that coincide with the overall themes of their respective albums, giving examples like Conan Gray’s “Sunset Season” and Hozier’s “Wasteland, Baby!”
Another intriguing pattern I noticed was people’s love for abstract album covers that involved some sort of digital elements, graphic designing, art, and/or illustrations. Below are some of these album covers:
(Notes From Future Tashfa: These answers also substantially informed my decision to incorporate a digital illustration drawn by me into the album cover as a majority of our target audience seemed to like such album covers to a great extent.
Tell us about a music video you particularly like. Outline at least one reason why you find it appealing.
Much like the answers to the preceding question, this one also provided rather helpful data, underlining that a lot of respondents were attracted to music videos that relate to the lyrics somehow, that are atmospheric, that are aesthetically-pleasing, that create impactful meanings, and that employ symbolism effectively. These are, thus, some elements our music video will try its best to reflect.
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