R&P Post 4: Audience groups of interests

The audience is vital to the successful distribution of music. The audience must identify with the brand, the artist and the track in order for them to spend money on the single, album, merchandise or concert tickets. In order for this to happen, the artist's image, branding and the whole package must appeal to the audience and conform to conventions of the genre.

I conducted research into the music that is most popular at the moment. The list of global top albums and singles tell me what the mass audiences are listening to. This information is vital to my project because we want to create an artist that would actually be successful if they debuted in real life. The research that I have conducted include statistics from ifpi.

From this information, I can infer that, although Adele has sold the highest number of albums, Wiz Khalifa's single "See You Again" has been downloaded more times. This doesn't include illegal downloads or streams, so in reality, the number would be a lot higher. 3 artists that are on both lists are Adele, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. This tells me that solo artists do well in terms of both singles and album sales. The fact that 2 of those 3 artists are British also suggests that British artists are successful in the global charts.

This information shows that young consumers consume a lot of music, with 82% accessing licensed music and the majority being willing to pay for music. This makes them a more lucrative audience than an older audience who are more likely to stream music illegally. By targeting a wide audience that caters for the younger music consumers, artists such as Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor gain more fans, making for a more lucrative business.

After looking at the research, I am confident in our decision to target mass audiences with a mainstream pop song. These are shown to do well in the global top albums and digital singles. Apart from a few anomalies, the majority of artists in the top charts have a young audience, who are more susceptible to being a fan of and looking up to their idol as a role model.