Modes of Reception
Henry Jenkins divided fandom subcultures into 5 dimensions:
Modes of reception
Encouraging viewer activism
Interpretive community
Culture production
Social community
In modes of reception, Jenkins argues that fans have a higher level of ‘emotional and intellectual involvement’ than average viewers, paying more attention and decoding media producers using their contextual knowledge. Viewer activism suggests that fans ‘claim the right to protest and protest loudly decisions contradicting their perception of what is desirable or appropriate’, thus actively expressing their opinions of media products.
In an interpretative community, fans share and debate their interpretations and analyses of media products, often hoping for a consistent narrative representation of storylines and characters. Cultural production involves fans actively engaging in ‘textual poaching’, where they use currently available content to create new content, such as fan-fiction and reviews. Finally, alternative social communities exist in which fans can share their enthusiasm of particular media products with other fans.
Targeting audiences is an important aspect when planning music videos because it increases the exposure of music videos and increases audience engagement with videos, making them more commercially successful. Music videos also create an official visual representation of musics singles, which is effective for creating and reinforcing an artist’s image which appeals to target audiences. Targeting audiences can also be informative as to identifying what types of content are popular with specific consumer demographics, which can be further explored and targeted in future music production.
Demographics & Psychographics
Specific audience targeting processes involve defining the target audience and conducting market analysis to understand how to appeal to specific audiences. Audience can be identified through demographics, which consists of a set of characteristic that describe a particular group of people. Demographics can include factors such as age, gender and ethnicity. In addition, psychographics break down consumers based on personality, social class and lifestyle.
The advertising firm Young & Rubican developed a lifestyle model that consists of 7 types:
Explorer: driven by discovery and challenge
Aspirer: materialistic, cares about others’ opinions
Succeeder: confident, organised , goal-oriented
Reformer: anti-materialistic, values independent judgement
Mainstream: most common, values security & daily routine
Struggler: escapist, lack of long-term plans
Resigned: survival-oriented, older demographic
Identifying the correct demographic and psychographic can narrow down the audiences for which a music video has a strongest appeal, enabling more effective and cost-efficient marketing strategies. On the other hand, it is also possible to use this information to guide products and expand the range of audiences to whom it may appeal to.
Primary & Secondary Audiences
A primary audience is the target audience of marketing, considered as the ‘decision makers’ who directly receive marketing messages. Marketing actively seeks to alter the behaviour of the primary audience. Secondary audiences are individuals who indirectly receive marketing messages but can interact with and exert influence upon primary audiences.
Market Analysis
Market analysis involves studying current trends in the music industry and understanding how different audiences consume music. For example, younger demographics are more likely to use streaming services such as Spotify for music consumption, thus it would be more effective to target this demographic using Spotify advertising. For music videos, paid promotions on social media platforms and YouTube, as well as short excepts on TikTok are likely to significantly increase audience exposure. On the other hand, older demographics are more inclined to consume music using traditional formats such as CDs and vinyls. Considering the resurgence of physical music products in recents years, products such as a Digipak CD are more likely to appeal to a wider demographic than before, providing further incentives to create collectible physical products for an album or single.
A successful marketing campaign which targeted music audiences is Spotify’s #foundthemfirst campaign. This allows users to view how early they learned about artists prior to large increases in their popularity. This campaign was likely targeted at the ‘explorer’ and ‘reformer’ consumer psychographics who are particularly interested by discovering new things and deviating from the mainstream audience. Provoking them to seek out new and upcoming artists, will increase the exposure of less well-known artists and increase the number of streams on specific artists, thus benefitting both Spotify and its signed artists.
Cross-Media Branding
Cross-media branding involves promoting music through multiple platforms. As a music producer, I can utilise a range of platforms to directly engage with a larger fanbase and promote our music video.
Our first steps in cross-media branding would be to establish a brand direction and accordingly devise a targeted marketing plan. Defining the direction of our brand includes creating the artist’s personality, the genre of our music and audiences which we can target through marketing. Creating a strong brand would make it easier for audiences to identify with the artist and expand the influence of our album. A marketing plan involves planning the platforms and methods that will be employed to market the album, as well as the specific contents and release schedules.
Next, we should create an official promotion website as the information hub for marketing resources. This website would include information on our artist, links to different social platforms, also potential Easter eggs and merchandise. The website would also be ideal for showcasing our music video, which is the main component of our marketing material.
Cross-media branding can be employed across various social media platforms for a stronger effect. Contents posted over different platforms can be tailored according to research on audience demographics, and also how different social media platforms format their posts (e.g. grid view and short videos on Instagram, up to 4 pictures per post on Twitter etc.). The social media accounts should be maintained by specific individuals to engage with the audience and regularly update posts based on the promotion schedule. Post contents can include image/video/audio teasers of the album and music video, reports and behind-the-stage content from live performances, and daily life update from the artist. These posts will help artist create engagement with audiences.
Another format that we could utilise is podcasts. Podcasts are growing in popularity because it provides in-depth insight of artists and their musical productions. We could record podcasts that cover a variety topics, from discussing musical inspiration, to revealing aspects of the artist’s daily life, to giving audiences a tour of the production environment. We could also involve content such as collaborating with other artists, or interviewing industry professionals to create a diverse range of content for fans.
In the real-world music industry, advertising and influencer marketing are frequently utilised to promote albums. Advertising involves paying search engines, social media platforms and other sites to show promotional material on their platforms. Targeting audiences based on view data collected by these platforms allows the advertisement is accurately reach relevant audiences and thus amplifying the effectiveness of advertising. A new method of marketing is to employ social media or video platform influencers to promote an album, often in exchange for merchandise and performance tickets. The followers of influencers has already been naturally filtered based on interest, so choosing the correct influence to promote the album directly targets a correct audience. This also creates a win-win scenario in which both artist and influencer receive additional exposure from the collaboration.