Audience Research
For my audience research, I created a questionnaire to discover people's interests, and through individual responses, find what habbits and preferences people had who liked the psychedelic genre.
The results for the questionnaire where surprising, having originally suspected psychedelic rock to be quite a niche genre, it was the most popular sub-genre of rock with 55% of rock listeners choosing it as one of their favourite sub-genres to listen to.
The preferences towards how psychedelic rock listeners consume music varies, however there are some consistent factors. For instance, 71% of the listeners of the genre enjoyed conceptual music videos more than performance or narrative. This was to be anticipated as conceptual videos are a convention in the pyschedelic rock genre.
With regards to how listeners of psychedelic rock genre find and listen to their music, there is no consistency. Sites and programmes such as YouTube, iTunes and Spotify have music available for all genres, whether they are produced by a mainstream or independent artist.
The large number of young people in my survey (24 and under) interested in pschedelic rock (73.3%) allows me to form an idea of the age of my audience.
For my second part of my audience research I constructed a questionnaire around my specific piece of music using participants who are already fans of the psychedelic genre i.e. I made each participant listen to 'No Growing' by The Olivia Tremor Control after which I ask them questions about their music habits and what they thought of the music. I did this in order to identify my audience profile with regards to both a development of the demographic from the survey and a reasonably detailed psychographic.
Questions:
1. What words and images come into your head when listening to this music?
2.What does this music remind you of? (Band influences, musical style/period ect.)
3. What are your habits of buying/downloading music?
(iTunes, Spotify ect.) How often?
4. How do you find your music?
Rufus:
1. 'Summer', '60s', 'Beatles influence', 'trippy' and 'upbeat'.
2. There seems to be a strong influence from The Beatles and 60s psychedelia.
3. I download and buy music with Spotify and Soundcloud about twice a month
4. I find music using the suggestions offered by Soundcloud based on what I have listned to in the past
Rafael:
1. Sleepiness, slow but not depressing
2. Influence from The Beatles
3. I mainly use Bandcamp as it helps me discover more independent artists
4. As said, I like to discover more independent artists with Bandcamp
Jordan:
1. Summer time, childhood memories of running through a field, happiness
2. Old music
3. I listen to music with sites such as Spotiy and Youtube everyday, I don't generally buy or download music
4. I find new music by using internet reccommendations, for instance YouTube offers suggestions based on previous music I have listened to.
Hannah:
1. Walking on an empty street on a nice day in the evening - sun, summer
2. Maybe a bit of Beatles influence, 60s - 70s?
3. I download and listen to music with YouTube converter
4. I find a lot of music through movies and T.V
Questionnaire
From questioning my focus group I found that they all found a link with 60s psychedelia or at least The Beatles who where pioneers of psychedelic rock.
The focus group are bewteen the age of 18-24, therefore, I will use band members of a similar age in order to appeal to this type of audience.
As well as this, this questionnaire has led me to form the conclusion that the introduction of digital downloads has led to a lack of variation with regards to how listeners of any genre generally listen to their music. However, the circumstance with which people find music is still slightly varied with Television and Radio providing a distinguishable medium for finding new music.
Genre Research
Band Label
Andwerks Records
Elephant 6 Recordings
Because Music
Modular Records
Touch and Go Records
Astralwerks is a music recording company primarily focused on Bands with on electronic and dance music. The band Sparklehorse has similar features to that of The Birds and Wings as Sparklehorse's genre is indie rock/ dream pop, however, due to Astralwerks focus on elctronic music, I felt that it was an unsuitable match.
The Elephant 6 Recording company is a collective of American musicians who spawned many of the notable independent bands of the 1990s including 'the Apples in Stereo', 'The Olivia Tremor Control' and 'Elf Power'. They collectivley all share an admiration for the music of the 1960s.
Because Music was founded in 2005 and primarily focuses on French and English Independent rock bands. Most notably, they have signed psychedelic pop bands with similar styles in music to Birds and Wings such as Metronomy and Django Django.
Modular recordings is an australian music company who notably signed Tame Impala, a band I have been both directly and indirectly influenced by in the production of my music video and Band persona. The focus on genre varies slightly in rock sub-genres such as Rock, Electronica, Neo Psychedelia and Pyschedelic Rock.
Touch and Go Records is an American Independent records label based in Chicago. Bands with similar genres such as 'Blonde Redhead' who explore similar genres to The Birds and Wings such from Alternative Rock to Psychedelia.
However 'Touch and Go' are reknown for signing primarily adventerous 'noise rock' bands.
From the audience research which found that many almost immideately recognized a Beatles/1960s influence, I have decided that Elelphant 6 Recordings would be the most suitable label to sign with my band because of the common admirations and influences lying in 1960s rock music.
