EVALUATION Q3a: Audience Engagement

EVALUATION Q3a: How do your products engage with audience? 
For this question I decided to make 4 different videos: 2 digipak unwrapping videos, a Q and A video session live on twitter and a radio interview with Astrid S talking about audience feedback for her latest music video and website, how it impacted in the production of the video and website and about how web 2.0 is allowing audience to participate actively, especially through social media.

The first thing I did for this question was make 2 digipak unwrapping videos. In the first unwrapping video I am a fan of Astrid S called Ashley who has just bought the new digipak by Astrid S.  

However, before I present these videos, I will state some points about my target audience. After doing some initial research into the audience for Astrid S, I discovered that her primary main audience is females aged 15-24. I looked at Astrid S's existing Facebook page and I found some really useful videos for audience. They are videos which follow Astrid S's fans. I could tell that most of Astrid S's fans were females aged 15-24 from these videos. Here is the 1st video that I found: This video follows some of Astrid S's fans waiting to see her live for her concert in Amsterdam. 
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All the fans who were interviewed and shown on camera were female aged 15-24. Also, these fans may have been dutch since this specific concert that these fans were waiting for was in Amsterdam. 


I noticed that most of the females especially in this video had a 'Brandy Melville' or 'arty' style, Brandy Melville is a clothing store which has quite simplistic, comfy clothing for females which consist of the colours: black, white, beige, cream, burgundy, grey, light brown. 



Here is the second video I found on Astrid S's Facebook. This is a video created by Spotify, where Spotify invite the 20 people who have listened to Astrid S the most on Spotify to an exclusive meeting and intimate concert at Universal Music Norway with Astrid S.  
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Yet again all the fans who were shown in this video on camera were females aged 15-24 with one male who was between 15-24 also. These fans may have been all Norwegian since the setting of the video is in Norway. They all look Scandinavian. 


I have also discovered that since Astrid is touring in mainly Scandinavian countries + The Netherlands at the moment, this could mean her primary target audience is females aged 15-24 from Scandinavian/European countries. 







I also asked my friend James who he thought the target audience would be for Astrid S since I have shown him her music and her style, he responded with this. He said he has a 14 year old sister and an 11 year old sister and they don't listen to electropop genre music yet, but instead they listen to pop music such as Katy Perry, Selena Gomez and Marshmello. 

He said he thinks the target audience for Astrid S is females aged 16-24. 
His 14 year old sister listens to rap and hip hop he said, this could relate to how hip hop and rap music is quite mainstream and at that age girls and boys don't know who they are yet and they are just trying to fit in with the mainstream crowd who listens to rap and hip hop. 




After all this research I discovered that I believe that Astrid S's target audience is females aged 15/16-24 with the secondary audience being males aged 15/16-24. This research has helped me a hell of a lot in determining Astrid S's main primary + secondary audience.  

A way I tried to attract the aged 15-24 primary audience was by having characters in my music video which were aged 17-18. I believed that this would attract a young female and male audience aged 15-24 since there is one 17 year old male character and one 18 year old female character. Also, having looked at many other electropop examples like Halsey, Charli XCX and MØ, I have discovered that their target audience is females aged 15/16-24. This also influenced my idea and decision that the target audience for Astrid S is females aged 15-24.

I still think, however, though, that Astrid S has a secondary audience of tweens aged 10-14. This is because she has easy, language free lyrics and the pop genre side to her music attracts a core audience of people aged 10-14 or perhaps even younger like 8-9 year olds. However, after looking at Astrid S's existing music videos, I discovered that the content in them is sometimes a bit inappropriate for children aged 8-14 e.g. kissing neck, clothing slightly revealing. Also after watching and listening to the track I had chosen to use for my music video - 'Bloodstream', I discovered that there were some slightly inappropriate, edgy lyrics - "touching me gently, holding me close, breathe on my skin, lips down my body".

For gender, I discovered after looking at many examples such as Halsey, Charli XCX, Mabel, MØ, Lorde, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, that the primary target gender audience for electropop is females because for a start, the majority of artists in the electropop genre are female which brings me to my point on Dennis McQuail's 'Uses and Gratifications' theory - one of the gratifications in his theory is personal identity; since the artist, Astrid S is a female aged 20, this can attract a female audience because they can identify with the artist and relate to them. The pop side of the electropop genre attracts a strong female audience and the electronic genre side attracts more of a male audience. 

DIGIPAK UNWRAPPING VIDEOS
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Ashley, a fan of Astrid S, unwrapping Astrid S's new digipak after buying it in the store, HMV:


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Astrid S unwrapping her new digipak:


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Q AND A VIDEO SESSION LIVE ON TWITTER

Secondly, I decided to do a live Q and A video session with the fans on twitter, with me being Astrid S and people sending in questions through the comments. I made a post saying "Guess what guys! Tonight I am doing a live video Q and A session on my latest products! Comment below questions and I'll answer some of them tonight see you soon"
Here are the questions that the fans commented on that post:

1. On what platforms will I be able to listen to your new album?

2. Where can I buy your merchandise? I really want a hoodie with your logo on it

3. I really want to stay updated on ur new music and events so do you have any other social media other than Twitter?

4. I saw you perform live like 2 years ago when you only had some EPs out so I really want to see you live again now performing ur new album! do you have any concerts coming up?

5. What is your favourite track on the new album?

6. I've loved your music ever since your first EP - 2AM! Does this new album have a special edition of some kind?

7. How do I subscribe to your latest music and news?

8. I love youuu!! Where can I buy your new album?! 


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The Script:

WEBSITE: Font Research

Before I decide on a font for my website and digipak, I have done some research into existing fonts for electropop artists and some artists from other genres. 

Charli XCX (electropop):

Tokio Myers (pop, electronic, classical): 

Astrid S (electropop):

Post Malone (hip hop):

MØ (electropop):

Mabel (electropop):

After looking at these I have decided that my favourite art the fonts for Charli XCX, Post Malone and Mabel. I think they are quite groovy, electro, techno, disco looking. This has now told me what kind of fonts to start looking for on dafont.com, a website I have used many times for AS Media Studies. 

I have now looked through a lot of the fonts under the category: 'Techno/Sci-Fi' and in 'Retro'. I took screenshots of all these fonts I found and liked:
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Logotronik

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Univox

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Plexifont BV

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Dylovastuff

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Yummy!

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Bisurk

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Slurp

Once I downloaded all these fonts, I uploaded them onto wix.com so that I can use the fonts on wix.com while editing my website. I applied each font to the title 'ASTRID S' sometimes like 'ASTRID_S' to see what all the fonts would look like on my website:
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Yummy!

Incopins Clusters

Dylovastuff

Bisurk

Logotronik

Slurp

Plexifont BV



I would say my personal favourite out of all these fonts is the last one 'Plexifont BV'. I think it looks the most unusual, striking and cool. I think the 4th one is too light and thin. My two least favourites are the 2nd and 3rd ones. I think they are kind of boring and not the right style I'm looking for. However, now, I am going to do some audience research, I'm going to ask many people which fonts they like best out of these through a Facebook survey which all my Facebook friends can see.

I searched on google how to create a survey through Facebook and I found this link which told me what to do. 

Here is the process I took:
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Then, you can look at the results for your survey:

The results from the survey revealed to me that the bold, bigger fonts seemed to be the most well-liked and favoured, e.g. the 'logotronik' font, the 'dylovastuff' font, the 'incopins clusters' font and the 'yummy' font. I also discovered this not only from the survey, but also from a facebook chat group I made where I asked my friends on Facebook what they thought of all the 7 fonts. They told me that they thought the rest were too thin and hard to read and see:
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The results narrowed my choices down to the bold fonts. I looked through them all again and decided that actually I didn't like any of them. This meant I would have to do more research and find another font which is bold and striking. Then I remembered, I REALLY like the existing font for the album title of Post Malone's album 'Stoney':
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I spent loads of time trying to find this font online somewhere to download and eventually I found a very similar font like this and where to download it from. I found it on dafont.com. It was called 'Planet Kosmos'. 

'Planet Kosmos' font

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK 2: Artist Logo Font

I searched on google how to create a audience survey through Facebook and I found this link which told me what to do. I created a survey which asked people which of 7 fonts would look best for an electropop artist logo on a website. 

Here is the process I took:
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Then, you can look at the results for your survey:

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