Audience Research

Dance Music Audience Research

Dance music is often found in clubs, bars and music festivals. This social association to the genre has resulted in the majority of the audience being within the age range of 16-24 years old. This is due to the age restriction of these social areas, in Europe the legal age to attend to clubs and bars is 16 years old, in the UK it's 18 and in the US it's 21. In addition, many popular music festivals have an age restriction of 16 years old without being accompanied by an adult.

This audience appears to be made up of the older spectrum of students who use music to escape at the weekends. Particularly with this music genre, the upbeat rhythm and fast tempo creates a dancing atmosphere. Furthermore, this particular type of music has positive connotations, for instance holiday and drinking, which reinforces the popularity of this genre as people enjoy listening to music which makes them feel happy. Additionally, this genre of music is generally promoted on social media, further increasing its popularity with a younger audience.


Audience Profile

Before assembling a focus group, our goal was to come up with a representative sample of our target audience. In order to do this, we began to identify specific characteristics of our target audience and a profile of an ideal member was created:

Age: 18
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: British
Social class: Middle
Interests: Dance music, fashion and travelling
Hobbies: Dancing, singing, art and makeup
Description: A typical member of our target audience enjoys socialising and meeting new people, their weekends are often spent in the club. They are oriented towards appearance and have a growing interest towards fashion. Their interest in dance music is influenced by their reminiscent of travelling.


Focus Group

To ensure our production meets our target audience, a focus group was made based on our audience profile. We complied a group of five people who share similarities with our 'ideal' target audience member. This same group of people will be used throughout our coursework and evaluations. By creating a focus group, we are able to obtain positive and negative feedback of our media products which we will use constructively.


Audience Theory: The Effects Model

I have created a PowerPoint presentation to explain the Effects Model of the Audience Theory:

The Effects Model suggests that the message produced by the music videos, album digipaks and magazine promotional posters have the power to effect the audience. As the audience are passive and powerless to prevent the influence, they are unconsciously persuaded to purchase the album.