2. Why is audience feedback important?
The success of a music video relies on it’s audiences reactions and reception.
I needed to know a bit about fans of the folk genre and how my video would
appeal to them. My main product may have not been entirely conventional of
the folk genre and had darker themes than fans would have liked.
Without the acceptance and good reception from the audience, a music video
will not achieve it’s main goal; to sell records and appeal to fans of the genre
and the band.
As my artist is unsigned and local, it has little to no fanbase which meant I
needed to rely on fans of the folk genre to asses my music video.
3. How I conducted my audience research
In order to conduct accurate audience research feedback on fans of the folk
genre, I needed to conduct an online survey posted out on my facebook page.
This was in order to find fans of the folk genre who I could test my music
video out on for their reaction.
My survey on www.surveymonkey.com asked partakers if they liked any folk
music such as mainstreams bands like ‘Mumford and Sons’ which have wide
appeal for young audiences. 32 percent of those partaking in the survey said
they enjoyed folk music and the next question asked them what they liked
about folk music. Over 70 percent of the partakers answered that listening to
folk music was enjoyable as it was relaxing while the other percentage
answered that they only listen to folk through a third party (i.e if a friend was
listening to it).
4. I’ve attended folk singer gigs before and the usual fans of the genre range
from ages 18-60 with the common age factor being 30-50. This gave me a
good indication as to who the target audience for my artist was. However the
only way I could show my music video to fans of the folk genre was to again
create a survey that asked feedback for my video.
As my artist Amateur Scientist has a very little fanbase and limited social
media presence, it was difficult to tap into their target audience and find the
band’s origins.
5. As my music video defies traditional folk conventions in terms of costume and
the tense atmosphere of violence; the misc-en-scene setting appears to be
the successful factor of the music video as the second survey found those
partaking felt a connection to the folk genre and the video. They also were
entertained, however, by the video’s sequence of events but when asked, a
large majority didn’t think the video represented the folk genre but still
fitted in with the song.
The audience feedback highlighted that the narrative video format worked
for the song as opposed to a live performance video.
6. Conclusion
The audience research and surveys I carried out gave me
the overall result that the video I created was intriguing
to the audience yet didn’t tie in with many folk
conventions with the exception of misc-en-scene. The
target audience for my video would have been the 20-30
year old audience who expressed interest in new folk
bands. As I only relied on surveys and not focus groups I
couldn’t get a fully worded reaction as the audience could
only rely on basic standard pre-written multi choice
answers which they had to select. However these were
enough to know how my video affected the audience and
whether it was successful as a part of the folk genre.