Audience Consideration

Audience Considerations

Due to the rapid growth in the music video over the last few decades, it has unsurprisingly caused an increase in demand from the audiences to interact more with their favourite bands. Some people in the industry heavily criticise the modern day importance of the music video, stating that it is a needless promotion that detracts from the music itself. Some bands, instead of using the music video as a promotional tool,  use it to create a platform of individuality. However, this in turn can promote an essence of the band and what style they are trying to exhibit, and could actively promote the band as rebels, thus attracting more rebel audiences.

In modern day bands any successful music video gives the band a chance to express some of their personality, talent and most importantly increase audience awareness. Depending on the type of image the band wishes  to present to its audience, depends on the style the band wishes to present to its target market. For instance if you chose an artistic style video, you will often appeal to more mature people from 16 years of age or older. Stereotypically they will probably have an upper class background as well. There are several issues with creating a music video that is heavily weighted on concept music video in an artistic style. Some audiences may deem the video as boring or may not even get the concept at all. This segregation caused by the video, could in turn either damage the reputation of the band in a particular part of the audience making the band elitist or just cause bad marketing for the song in general, decreasing the profit margin. However, there are several benefits from using an artistic music video as it allows the band to create a style that the audience will associate with the band. Not only that, it causes the music video to be watched repeatedly as the audience is trying to discover the meaning of the video and what it is trying to ultimately achieve. This style is a puzzle, which creates greater exposure to the song for the audience, therefore  creating greater promotion.

We felt that this artistic style may be beneficial to our music video, since we want to stick to the forms and conventions of main stream indie bands such as Snow Patrol; but to put a slightly different slant on the band to give it an edge over other bands in the same genre. Also, it will allow us to develop something more than a standard performance video, making the ‘Band’ stand out from the rest of the of the bands in this genre.

Distribution

The distribution of the music video is a fascinating but complex process. With reference to mainstream indie, depending on the type of songs that are released, it will either be located on the mainstream broadcasts such as MTV or 4Music, or if it is not so popular in the charts it may be found on TMF or MTV Rocks. So for bands such as The Fray, which have released several songs that have been played on various outlets – ‘How to save a life’ was on every station imaginable for the time of its release, however, ‘She is’ was only found on TMF mainly at the time of its release. A lot of the time the distribution of the song is not band dependent, it is more a question of which audience the band is suited too.

Not only that but YouTube has developed the way bands distribute their music videos as well.  Corporate companies, such as VUE, have bought music video rights so that the music video are now actively making money through advertisements attached to them. The amount of money made depends on the popularity of the band and the song released. This means that music videos are accessible at any time, any place, anywhere with the result that distribution is far wider than it has been before.

I feel that bands such as The Fray and Snow Patrol have successfully merged two styles of music together, meaning they have a larger audience to distribute their new material to. They are extremely successful as they use all the distribution methods available to them including having their music videos and singles on their website and accessing new markets through MTV, Radio and YouTube Channels.