QUESTION THREE: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

To collect my audience feedback I created a online survey on the website survey planet
(https://surveyplanet.com). I ensured that I used a variety of question and answer types to
gain a range of data, and simultaneously make sure the survey was engaging and could be
done quickly, and wasn’t repetitive or time consuming. I included basic questions regarding
demographics and about music genre preferences so I was able to find out the
demographics of my audience, which I thought would be relevant with regards to evaluating
stereotypes/gender/ representation etc. Including a question about music genre
preferences as well as method of music consumption allowed my feedback and evaluation
to be more detailed and analytical, due to having a more specific idea about the audience.
Finally, I included a range of questions about my media products, asking about the best
aspect, overall ratings, the combination of the products and the appropriacy of the products
with reference to the genre. Creating questions that would give me both qualitative and
quantitative data meant that I would be able to have more statistical and numerical results
as well as more opinion based and detailed answers. The data I obtained from this survey
was extremely useful as a media producer. However a problem I came across when looking
at the results was that people preferred not to answer the qualitative/essay style questions,
or wrote one word/short answers which meant the qualitative data was not as ‘strong’ or
valid. I could see this from being able to look at how many people completed the survey
against how many people answered specific questions. This was a slight concern I had prior
to creating the survey because I knew that people (including myself) are more inclined to
answer quick multiple choice/scale questions because of the ease. Having said that, there
were still some longer answers to these questions.

Q1: What gender are you? (25/25)

I asked this question because I felt it was important in terms of relating to the narrative. I
used my personal Twitter profile to promote my survey, as well as emailing it to a random
selection of my peers, ensuring I kept it an approximate balance of males and females. I
found asking this important, as it is relevant to the content of my music video as well as the
narrative (as the video explores a females emotions and is in her perspective).
Stereotypically, we can assume female audience members will relate to what is explored
and therefore the productions on the whole. In my target audience profile case study, I
explored some aspects of demographics and the Psychometrics of the Indie Folk genre -
which became my target audience. When researching this genres audience there was no
evidence to suggest that the audience had a predominant genre. This result shows my
audience was predominantly female. The result shows I did not succeed in that respect, as I
never took into account the gender of my target audience, as I did not think it was relevant
in the sense that I didn’t want to make my productions ‘exclusive’ to a particular gender.

Having said this, I am not surprised by the results. I chose to explore a female’s perspective
and emotion by using a female actor. I did this as the artist is female, and it is a cathartic
piece of music, which is extremely personal to the artist. Therefore, I thought it appropriate
in my planning process to use a female actor and have it in that perspective. Although, to
ensure I appealed to both genders as I had planned, I should have perhaps explored other
elements or ‘sides’ to the narrative, or the same situation with different characters to make
it more open and less ‘exclusive’.

Q2: Which music genres do you listen to? (Choose 5) (25/25)

I asked this question as I wanted to get a more detailed and specific idea about the
interests of my audience on the whole, it is also important to see if my audience consisted of
people with a range of different interests and taste in music, or if there was a trend. I
specified in the survey that people should select 5 out of the 13 choices of genre, so that
they the question was easy and people wouldn’t have to narrow down their music tastes.

Furthermore, it would be wrong to suggest people only listen to one genre and by forcing
people to ‘narrow down their taste’, it would create inaccurate results. In addition, by
combining similar genres into one selection added to the level of simplicity to the survey,
ensuring it isn’t overwhelming and time consuming having too little or too many answer
choices. For example; ‘Reggae/Dub & Dancehall/Afrobeats’ or ‘Rock/Indie Rock/Punk Rock’,
as the genres and sub-genres often cross over. The survey showed that the most popular
genres were Hip Hop, RnB and Rock/Indie Rock/Punk Rock. As the survey was anonymous I
had no expectation of which genres would be most popular. However, the more common
and overall ‘widely listened to’ genres, were most popular. For example, more arguably
mainstream genres such as Hip Hop were frequently chosen as opposed to more alternative
genres such as Jungle and Drum & Bass, or extremely atypical genres such as Religious
music. In terms of gender or demographics there was no influence or correlation with genre
choices. There was a slight pattern in the combination of genre people chose. For example,
Reggae/Dub, RnB, Hip Hop, Jungle and Grime/ Garage/ Bassline was a common combination
that people selected. I found this interesting because it is the combination I would choose if
I was asked that question. This made me wonder whether I didn’t consider how I would
appeal to a wider audience enough, or as much as I initially wished to. Although, by using my
social media to promote the survey it could suggest a slight bias in the results as people who
‘follow me’ are more likely have similar interests, be of a similar age group, etc to me.

However, when considering the time scale or resources I had to promote my survey and gain
a large amount of responses to evaluate, the method of promotion I used was the most
appropriate and successful way I could have done it.

The Folk/Indie Folk genre had a mid range popularity, with 10 out of 25 people including it in
their 5 choices. I think it’s positive that people who don’t often or predominantly listen to
the genre of the music video took the survey and was a part of the audience. This is because
it allows a variety of opinions and responses, as it is important for me as a media producer
to have a range of positive and critical or negative responses. Additionally, people who
commonly listen to the genre could be inclined to give strictly positive feedback due to their
preference, which is also why I chose to promote my survey in the way I did, rather than
targeting people to answer it who I knew would like/dislike it, in order to get an array of
feedback.

Q3: How do you predominantly listen to music? & Q4: Which of these platforms do you use
the most?

Question three was important in aiding my understanding of music consumption platforms.

With regards to genre, Indie Folk is a fairly new genre, deriving from singer-songwriter style
and Folk music, with many other influences. The audience age demographic for this genre
(and my target audience) is roughly 15-28, therefore the majority of my audience use
Streaming to consume music. Furthermore, this would also be due to the ease and
accessibility of streaming, and the lower cost as opposed to purchasing music in a shop or
online.
Question four allowed me to look at the specific platforms, giving me more detail and
increasing my success when marketing my products. As the pie chart shows, 60% of the
people who did the survey use Spotify, the online and offline streaming service. This is
exactly what I expected for this target audience and more specifically age demographic.
Spotify can be used online but is most frequently used on the app for mobile. It allows
people to use it with internet for no cost at all, or allows people to have a subscription
where they can download music for a low cost. Spotify often promote student deals or
discount and frequently advertise extremely low priced deals. Therefore it is evident that
they aim to appeal to a younger audience who are more likely to have less money due to
being in education, part time work and lower wages. As expected, the percentage of people
who purchase hard copies was extremely low at 4%. One reason for this is as mentioned
before, and perhaps if I had more of a range of age demographics participating the answers
would have been different and more varied. However, due to the continuous rise in
advancing technology it is debateable how significant the difference in results would be.

Q5: Overall what would you rate the music video? (24/25)

Looking at my survey results I am unsure about the level of relevance that this question has
and how helpful it is when evaluating my products and audience responses. However,
initially I created this question to be able to infer an overall positive or negative response to
my productions – which is given from the results of this question. Furthermore, the question
and answer choices are vague and not specific, therefore the results would be.
 Q6: What do you think the best aspect of the music video is?

My focus and priority throughout the creation process of my Music video production was to
ensure the visual elements were the strongest aspect of the production. From this result I
can infer that this was definitely a strength of my production. In terms of genre typicality,
the indie folk genre often has a strong focus on making the music video extremely
aesthetically pleasing and beautiful, rather than an in depth or strong narrative, therefore
this is appropriate to the genre. During the planning process, I struggled creating a clear
narrative and plot to my music video, and changed the idea multiple times. After shooting
my footage and once I had began editing I cut a lot of the final shots out which changed a
large factor of the narrative. Therefore, I’m not surprised the narrative scored lowly and this
determines it is something I need to improve on as a media producer/creator.

Q7: Do you think the music video is appropriate for the song/genre?

YES NO

24 (96%) 1 (4%)

As previously mentioned, the majority of participants in my survey were female (68%),

which is over double of the male participants (32%). The one participant who said the music
video isn’t appropriate for the genre was male. This is interesting with regards to my
previous concerns about the music video not being ‘relatable’ from a male perspective, and
in a sense, confirms this. Having said that, there are still 7 male participants who chose the
video to be suitable for the song. When looking at the results to this question it made me
wander whether the gender of an artist makes a difference to how engaging a song is for the
audience based on particular issues.

It is evident that people use music as a coping mechanism and often a healing system when
they are going through something such as a break up. A study from a university in Berlin
surveyed 772 participants to find out why this is the case. 108 out of 470 participants of who
gave specific moments when sad music is appealing, used the personal examples of break
ups/separation’s. The researchers found that ‘you experience four different cognitive
rewards of music-evoked sadness: the reward of imagination, emotion regulation, empathy
and no “real-life” implications’ (1). Essentially, you get a subconscious pleasure and a
potentially conscious benefit through using music as a catharsis and you identify with the
lyrics of the song, the melody and pitch have an impact (minor often associated with
negative emotions and major with positive, having an uplifting effect). In addition, one
empathises with the artist and this is what I find most interesting and crucial to my survey
evaluation. The empathy with the artist makes people feel they have ‘something in
common’, a similar effect to perhaps talking to someone who is experiencing a similar
problem/situation to you; being able to relate makes people feel less alone. Furthermore,
this occasional release can help overall in the long term.

This idea of ‘empathising with the artist’ makes me wonder whether the gender of the artist
impacts on this level of empathy and how much an audience member can engage with the
artist. For example, stereotypically are females able to empathise more with a female artist
and vice versa when looking for this cathartic release through music? This is a question I feel
I should have asked in my survey and would do next time, as well as perhaps asking more
questions about the narrative and the audience/artist relationship and interaction.

Q8: What would you change about the music video to improve it?

This was the first qualitative data based question. So I wasn’t surprised that only 14/25
participants took part in this question due to the reasons previously mentioned. The
majority of the responses include comments about narrative being unclear and therefore
some of the acting. This further confirms my need to improve planning and I think a key part
of this should be to improve my planning and perhaps create more mind maps and so forth,
as well as doing more research to perhaps provide more inspiration from other music videos
and media texts, which would be helpful especially for narrative ideas.
Q9: Is there a clear link between the print production and the music video?

I wasn’t surprised by this result as I thought there was a clear link between my productions
and made this a priority when planning and designing my print productions. The first link I
used was using the actress from my music video in the inside back cover of my album, and
using the same location in the background. I kept the theme of minimalism in terms of the
visual aspects, using geometry in the mise-en-scene and props of the music videos and then
geometric shapes in my print productions – this simplicity aspect is typical of the Indie Folk
genre music videos. A stronger link I could have made however was with more of the images
in the print productions, such as the beach images and using this location as part of the
outside locations in my music video, rather than the ones used. Furthermore I ensured a
clear link through the geometric shape of the print production and mise-en-scene/props in
the music video of the dream-catcher shape. I used this motif to reinforce symbolism of the
idea of dream and escape, and what the character desires. Furthermore, this embeds the
narrative of the song into the music video and print production, meaning a strong link
between the song and productions, which is clearly crucial.

Q10: Is the print production appropriate for the song/genre?

In my print productions planning, I explained how the image I wanted to create for the artist
is a pure, genuine and natural image, which is similar to the song as it is personal and
honest. The style of Bella Askew’s music is extremely genuine and non-commercial or
exaggerated. This explains the crisp, clean and minimal style to the print productions – a
reflection of and maintaining my desired artist image.

Q11: Would the print production make you want to buy the album?

This result is extremely positive, as the main point of the productions is to advertise both the
artist and the album. Despite having a negative and 20% neutral responses, 76% of
responses are positive and this feedback essentially shows I have been successful.
Q12: What was the best aspect of the print productions?

This feedback shows I was successful in creating a aesthetically pleasing but well composed
simplistic and geometrical print productions, as I had aimed to. The majority of comments
are complimenting and commenting on the visual aspects. Additionally, they comment on
how the composition and other visual aspects effect their mood so forth, which helps the
effect of the song.

Q13: What would you change about the print productions to improve them?
On the whole, the responses were positive and what I expected. As mentioned before, I
would want to have a clearer link to the music videos. And I was also sceptical about my use
of colour and font and the contrast with the natural colour tones, using the brighter
pink/orange colour didn’t conform to genre typicality or the associations with indie folk and
the natural world.

Q14: Overall, how would you rate the combination of the print productions and the music
video productions?

The overall combination of the productions scored a higher average (8.74) than the music
video alone out of 10 (8.17). This feedback suggests that overall I was successful in my aims
of creating two aesthetically pleasing productions that were appropriate to the genre and
song, and were interlinking.

Throughout my creation process I ensured I got feedback from both peers and teachers. This
was both extremely crucial and helpful. For my music video, the feedback I got from my
teacher about refining the narrative to a more concise and clear plot was extremely helpful.
As mentioned, this is something I need to improve for future productions. For my print
productions, the feedback from my teachers and peers about the composition and layout
made me reconsider my design and massively improved it (see both print productions
development slideshows). A pivotal part of development during creation is to be able to
recognise negatives of a production and accept if something ‘isn’t working’, which is a skill I
have learnt during this process.
(1) https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/sad-music-breakup_n_6113920