This gave me clues about the readership in term of their age, gender and lifestyles. As part of this exercise I obtained media packs for the magazines which provided statitiscal information about the target audience.
I searched online and located the magazine covers featuring the Arctic Monkeys:
NME Magazine
Q Magazine
To discover who buys these magazines I visited www.NRS.co.uk, this organisation provides estimates of the number and type of people reading newspapers and magazines.
Q Mag
666,000 copies sold in total, 14th most popular monthly general magazine in the UK.
513,000 men
153,000 women
572,000 aged 15 - 44
94,000 45+
NME Magazine
388,000 copies sold in total, 16th most popular weekly general magazine in the UK.
296,000 men
91,000 women
339,000 aged 15 - 44
49,000 aged 45+
By looking at these figures we can see that a large majority of the readership are male aged 15 - 44 . It is important to note that there is still a significant market for males aged 45+. The female readership is about 25%.
Demographics measures social class according to job of the main breadwinner of a household This breakdown is often referred to as socio-economic classification.
I obtained the table below from the NRS website showing the demographic breakdown of the population in the UK, 2009)
As a result of further reasearch on the NRS website I learned that the demographics for Q and NME magazines were as follows
Q Magazine:
ABC1 - 250,000
C2DE - 137,000
NME Magazines:
ABC1 - 444,000
C2DE - 222,000
I managed to track down the media pack for NME online acquiring the following information about the demographics of the readership.
The figures real that the both the magzines are purchased by people in households in which the main breadwinner is an office worker or professional person suggesting a reasonably high level of education
It needs to be borne in mind however that demograpgic studies provide limited information as they do not take into account household income or the buying preferences on the non breadwinners in the fasmily.
Reviews
From examination of the magazine covers I obtained useful poionters about the readership and potential fan base for my band.
In order to develop my understanding of the Arctic Monkey's specific target audience I decided study their song reviews and gig critiques
The following is a concert review from the daily telegraph's website involving an interview with the bands lead singer and song writer, Alex Turner.
"He has also traded the street-level observations of old for a prettier, more adult, cryptic style of wordplay."
This tells me the band is changing their direction giving me some idea about target audience, I now know that I need use crpytic messages in my video to relate to the newer word play and it needs to mature for adults to enjoy.
Pschographics divides people into types in a wide range of ways. It seems to me that their early material was aimed squarely at a teenage audience Perhaps they could be grouped as individualists who want to change the status quo.
"Alex Turner’s crew have moved beyond the dispiriting arena of action and reaction, into a zone where they’re allowed to exist simply as an excellent band, guided by sure-footed artistic vision."
This quote shows Arctic Monkeys need an artistic music video. I have noted this requirement and plan to incorporate filming techniques such as greyscale editting and a wide array of camera shots.
Fans
Furthermore to understand the bands target audience I researched their fan base and go straight to the heart of what I am looking for.
Firstly I hit two popular social networking sites
Here are screen shots of fans at Facebook:
(src: www.facebook.com\arcticmonkeys)
(src: www.facebook.com\arcticmonkeys)Myspace:
It is evident from both screen shots that there is a world wide fan base. This is surprising as the band have strong regional accents. However perhaps it shows that the problems and challenges facing tennagers growing in inner city environments is commonplace throughout the developed society. The screenshots show ages of the fans following the Arctic Monkeys, the ages are often changed and mostly inaccurate resulting in unreliable data. However by analysing the profile pictures it's apparnt that the target audience seems to relate to the results found from magazine research.
Website
Finally I visted the Arctic Monkeys website, http://www.arcticmonkeys.com/
I noticed that the "look" of bands home page and the Myspace page were very simlar incoporating the same colours and graphics.
They use a black and white colour scheme which connotates starkness and bleakness. The text is bold and curvy.
On the website there are images of the band playing at live concerts. The crowd is young, boisterous and gripped by the music.
Summary
Using the research collected, I can now profile the Arctic Monkeys target audience:
- 15-30
- Indie
- Male
- ABC1
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