Target Audience of Band

In this section of the blog I am going to discuss and establish the target audience of the streets in terms of their psychographics, demographics and the socio economic classification of the bands fans. Psychographic variables are any attributes of a consumers personality relating to their personality, values, attitudes, interests or their lifestyle. These can be contrasted with demographic variables such as the consumers age and gender which can be classified as in-nate personality variables. A socio-economic group, or a social grade, are based around the occupation, job and income of the household and how that income might be spent.

To first try and establish the type of consumer associated with the band, I investigated the bands facebook fan page,http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/TheStreets?ref=tss, to have a look at the sort of people joining the group and posting comments on the page to the band. I looked through a lot of the comments and noticed at least 90% of comments where from middle-aged males asking when the bands next album was to be released. In terms of their psychographics, they seemed to be of a large build with a shaven head, the sort of style usually associated with the British football hooligan. This did not come of a surprise, as the streets lyrics are very harsh to reality and often contain profanity, which is why the words of the lead singer "Mike Skinner" have attracted this sort of range. Demographics suggest that the consumer is usually in their middle ages, late 30's/early 40's and male, very little women made comments or join on the bands page. In terms of ethnicity, they are all of a white/British ethnicity and appear to be from a working class background. A comment was posted onto the fanpage, specifically talking about the song we have chosen to produce a video on saying, "Stay positive always gets me up and moving on a hungover monday".

The magazines the bands appear in is a great way of finding out the consumer audience of the band. Typically the bands that appear in the magazine NME will interest the reader, therefore the majority of people reading the magazine will be interested and fans of the streets. The article i have placed into this blog was one of many that the streets have appeared in, The Streets have appeared in NME on numerous occasions and have made the cover a couple of times. Just as some background information, the NME (New musical express), is a popular music magazine in the UK that has been published every week since March 1952. Its a magazine which originally focused on punk rock, but in todays issues, many bands from the "indie" genre of music can be found.

I visited http://www.nrs.co.uk/ which is the national readership survey website. On this website I managed to find statistics which show how many people buy and read the magazine and the background on the consumer. Approximatly each week, 325 people read the NME, 218,000 of these people are from a higher status working occupation. Examples include people who work in management of companies and people with office jobs. 107,000 people who read the magazine are from a working class background, so people who work in factories and labourers. This is an interesting statistic, and does not support the ideology of what we found on the facebook fan page. If i were to make a prediction i would have assumed more people would have come from the working class background, however different articles are produced every week containing different bands which can appeal to peoples varying musical interest. I believe the issue was to contain an article on the streets, that week more working class people would purchase the magazine, as that is the target audience of the band.

294,000 people out of the 325,000 consumers are aged between 15 and 44, with only 31 consumers being aged over 45. This is not a suprising statistic, i believe due to the NME wanting to be current and up to date with recent and upcoming bands, this would appeal more to younger people who are from the same era as the bands being published in the magazine. For someone over 45, they are more likely to not be interested in upcoming bands as they already have bands that they enjoy listening to from a different era to compare the musicians in the magazine with. In terms of gender, 241,000 of the consumers who buy the magazine where male compared to only 84,000 women. This suggests the bands that the magazines choose to publish, for example the band we are looking at, appeal more to men. This is understandable, with the bands featured commonly producing songs which contain profanity and are on subjects which women may find offensive. For example the streets produced a song called "Fit but you know it", talking about women being teases and self-loathing. Therefore if this type of band are being featured in the magazine, women will not want to read it.

Furthermore, i visited the website http://www.nme.com/mediapack/ for further information on the consumer audience. This paticular website focused more on the people who visit the NME website instead of purchasing the magazine. Therefore it is providing me with a different statistic and a more detailed view into the consumer. The NME website is europes biggest and most viewed music website generating over 1.3 million users and 13 million website hits. 63% of these consumers visit the website at least weekly or more showing that the website is succesful in capturing peoples interest, leading them to check the site on regualr occasions. In terms of the demographics, 65% of the website consumers are male, with 50% being aged 16-24, supporting the statistic of the people who buy the magazine. Suggesting that the same people who buy the magazine will additionally visit the website. 23% of the consumers are aged between 25-34 leading to the assumption that the magazine and website both attract a younger audience. The job occupation of the website consumer is mainly from a higher status job occupation, with 79% of people working in management or offices.

The website has a short description of the type of personality expected of the consumer. The consumer is suggested to be passionate about music and as a result are more responsive to brands an advertising. Another website which proved helpful in me collecting research into the consumer was http://www.ipcmedia.co.uk/. This website claimed that the median age of consumers was 23 and that the consumer has a strong relationship with NME and completly trust the brand. It provided information such as the consumer is influential when buying mobile phones and that they are twice as likely to convince friends and family which mobile phone is worth getting. It also stated that the consumer is completly obsessed with music and that they rely on the editorial and the adverts to keep them up to date with new music, the knowledge they posses makes them superior when it comes to music in friendship and peer groups. Furthermore, when concerning film and DVD, NME readers enjoy watching films both at home and at the cinema. They tend to buy a new DVD every month which is higher then the national average. I feel I have now gathered enough information about my target audience to produce a succesful video that would appeal to such individuals.