Bastille
Audience Research
Information about a target audience is made up of both demographic data, which is quantitative data about the audience’s age, gender, income etc. and also psychographic data which is qualitative data about the audience’s likes/dislikes, their lifestyle, their personalities and lastly, their beliefs.
Bastille are an alternative rock band who formed in 2010 consisting of four band members; Dan Smith who is the lead singer, Chris Wood, Kyle Simmons and Will Farquarson. In December 2010, they were signed to a record label called EMI and Virgin Records. EMI were a British multinational music recording and publishing company and were the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and were known as being one of the big four record companies. However, unfortunately, last year in 2012 the record label announced its break up due to financial troubles. The band have released their first and most popular album ‘Bad Blood’ in 2013 which contained the bands single ‘Pompeii’ which was in huge demand. Although the band were signed to EMI record label, they have now been offered a contract with Virgin Records. Virgin Records are a British record, founded by English entrepreneur, Richard Branson.
Demographics:
This is the typical stereotype of Bastille’s target audience based on the information that I have found from the graphs, maps and other research.
Gender: Male
Age: 18 – Early 30’s
ABC: B/C1
Religion: Atheist
Education: University and Further Education Students
Occupation: Full Time Student and Part Time Shop Assistant
Marital Status: Single
Income: £300-£400 per Month
Nationality: British
Information about a target audience is made up of both demographic data, which is quantitative data about the audience’s age, gender, income etc. and also psychographic data which is qualitative data about the audience’s likes/dislikes, their lifestyle, their personalities and lastly, their beliefs.
Bastille are an alternative rock band who formed in 2010 consisting of four band members; Dan Smith who is the lead singer, Chris Wood, Kyle Simmons and Will Farquarson. In December 2010, they were signed to a record label called EMI and Virgin Records. EMI were a British multinational music recording and publishing company and were the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and were known as being one of the big four record companies. However, unfortunately, last year in 2012 the record label announced its break up due to financial troubles. The band have released their first and most popular album ‘Bad Blood’ in 2013 which contained the bands single ‘Pompeii’ which was in huge demand. Although the band were signed to EMI record label, they have now been offered a contract with Virgin Records. Virgin Records are a British record, founded by English entrepreneur, Richard Branson.
Demographics:
This is the typical stereotype of Bastille’s target audience based on the information that I have found from the graphs, maps and other research.
Gender: Male
Age: 18 – Early 30’s
ABC: B/C1
Religion: Atheist
Education: University and Further Education Students
Occupation: Full Time Student and Part Time Shop Assistant
Marital Status: Single
Income: £300-£400 per Month
Nationality: British
The above screenshot shows some statistics based on the band Bastille. As we can see, the band currently has 1.4 million fans on social media websites and 5.479 of them were added yesterday. The bands overall fan figure has been taken from Twitter, Facebook, Sound Cloud, Last.fm and YouTube. This shows us that the band is obviously extremely popular all around the world, not only in the UK and they have a very big fan base.
This graph shows us some fan demographic information which has been taken from social media websites. This information helps us to understand that the majority of Bastille’s fan base is relatively young and only a very small percentage of them are older. The main age bracket for people for the young people who listen to the band starts from the age of 16 and goes up to around 31. After this age, the figures start to decrease rapidly apart from the odd age, where a small percentage of people listen to the band. From this information, I am able to see that the majority of Bastille’s fans are young, which could be because the band hasn’t really been around for a very long time, and only really in the last five years, people have really come to hear of the band name and the music that they produce. People from the older age bracket may be more likely to stick with the music which they have grown up with from previous eras. This could be the reason for a decrease in percentages.
Also from this table, I can see that the band tend to be more popular with females rather than males. For example, at the age of 19, the percentage of females who are fans of Bastille is 3.47% whereas the male fan base at this age is 0.58%. This may be because the female fans are more attracted to the appearance of the band members and take a liking to the band because of this. However, for other age groups, the percentage of male fans is higher.
This information however could be slightly incorrect because it is only showing us the fan base from social media websites and the majority of older people tend not to use these websites and are therefore unable to follow or like Bastille’s pages.
This is an overview of the fan gender distribution. 56% of males who use social media networking websites like Bastille and 44% of females like them.
In total,
Bastille have had 88.4 million plays on their videos and 397,088 were from one
day alone. They have also had 718,1k views on their videos on YouTube. This again shows the popularity of the band
worldwide and tells me that they work hard to be recognised and build up
relationships with their fans to draw them in.
The band are popular in all different parts of the world which is why they have such a big fan base. In the world map below, we can see that from the amount of Twitter followers the band has, they are most popular in the United Kingdom and the USA. A total of 2,374 per 100,000 people follow the band’s movement via Twitter. The majority of these followers are most probably young and use social media websites a lot on their mobile, tablets and computers. This information again is only telling us about the Twitter fans and not the majority of people who do not use social media.
The band are popular in all different parts of the world which is why they have such a big fan base. In the world map below, we can see that from the amount of Twitter followers the band has, they are most popular in the United Kingdom and the USA. A total of 2,374 per 100,000 people follow the band’s movement via Twitter. The majority of these followers are most probably young and use social media websites a lot on their mobile, tablets and computers. This information again is only telling us about the Twitter fans and not the majority of people who do not use social media.
This graph shows us that around September 2nd 2013, the number of fans that were using social media websites to follow the band increased by 9k and then dropped below 6k and has ever since been increasing and the decreasing. The increase between September 2nd and September 16th may have been because the band was gigging.
This monitor shows us the feedback of what the general public think of the band Bastille. Judging by where meter is on the monitor, I can see that the band are very popular on social media networking websites and have received the majority of positive feedback rather than negative.
Here I can see that the most amount of downloads for the band’s songs have come from people living in Italy 61,117 people have been downloading the band’s songs. However in the United Kingdom, a reduced amount of 46,833 people have been downloading the band’s songs using torrent websites. This is very interesting to know as I would have thought that the band would have been more popular with people living in the UK rather than with Italian people. Although the band’s torrent activity has come mostly from Italy, for the top cities, Perth (Australia) is the top city with 4,190 people downloading the music. I am able to see that the band are recognised worldwide and are extremely popular. The total downloads from torrent websites is 241.9k which is an extortionate amount.
All of the graphs and maps shown above have been taken from musicmetric.com.
This is
another source that I have found that has helped me to gather more information
about who Bastille targets their music at.
“But theirs was nothing compared to the crowd Bastille attracted. A packed big tent with at least another 10,000 people gathered outside (including us) watching the screens. Now I‘ve grown to like the album, and Mr Bastille knows how to write a tune, a hook, and a lyric you can sing along to, but it seems faintly depressing that this is what today’s 16 year olds are going crazy over. Bastille also played a short semi-acoustic set on the Introducing stage so at least we saw them there!”
“But we also learnt that the younger element of Reading’s clientele, by which we mean the 90% of the crowd who are between 16 and 25 really like… the same music their parents, and probably their grandparents like. Certainly that’s true in terms of what we might loosely call “rock” – today’s teen rebels are more likely to be found at the extreme regions of dance or (modern) R‘n’B.”
URL - http://spendmatters.co.uk/reading-festival-review-day-one-green-day-bastille-frank-turner-kodaline-and-slaves-star/#sthash.e3zCE8tJ.dpuf
This information is very useful as I am able to see that the majority of Bastille’s fans enjoy attending music festivals such as Reading and Leeds, a rock festival, showing me that the fans must be into rock and alternative rock music. It also tells me that 90% of the crowd at Bastille’s set were between the ages of 16 and 25 showing that the band aim their music at younger people rather than older and attract the typical stereotypes of teenage people.
Psychographics:
From my findings, I have decided that Bastille’s typical target audience are in the lower middle class or the working class. They are most likely to be underachievers. This is because they like the relaxed lifestyle that they lead and do not strive to improve it. They are incredibly social and enjoy being in crowds and meeting new people at festivals and gigs which makes them very happy. They tend to prefer the summer season rather than winter as they are able to go to festivals, drink and socialise with friends whilst relaxing in the atmosphere which they enjoy most. They care more about their social group of friends than they do anybody else. They aim to lead a simplistic lifestyle with not much hassle involved.
Overall, music record labels exist to make a profit from the artists that are signed to their record labels. Therefore to make a profit, they have to use demographic data to find out information such as fans ages’, gender, income, social class and education to target them specifically. However, this information isn’t enough and they also have to use psychographic information to find out about peoples likes/dislikes, lifestyles, personalities and beliefs to enable them to direct the specific fan base. If record labels such as EMI, get the mix of information correct, they are likely to make a great deal of money from the continuing success of Bastille.
“But theirs was nothing compared to the crowd Bastille attracted. A packed big tent with at least another 10,000 people gathered outside (including us) watching the screens. Now I‘ve grown to like the album, and Mr Bastille knows how to write a tune, a hook, and a lyric you can sing along to, but it seems faintly depressing that this is what today’s 16 year olds are going crazy over. Bastille also played a short semi-acoustic set on the Introducing stage so at least we saw them there!”
“But we also learnt that the younger element of Reading’s clientele, by which we mean the 90% of the crowd who are between 16 and 25 really like… the same music their parents, and probably their grandparents like. Certainly that’s true in terms of what we might loosely call “rock” – today’s teen rebels are more likely to be found at the extreme regions of dance or (modern) R‘n’B.”
URL - http://spendmatters.co.uk/reading-festival-review-day-one-green-day-bastille-frank-turner-kodaline-and-slaves-star/#sthash.e3zCE8tJ.dpuf
This information is very useful as I am able to see that the majority of Bastille’s fans enjoy attending music festivals such as Reading and Leeds, a rock festival, showing me that the fans must be into rock and alternative rock music. It also tells me that 90% of the crowd at Bastille’s set were between the ages of 16 and 25 showing that the band aim their music at younger people rather than older and attract the typical stereotypes of teenage people.
Psychographics:
From my findings, I have decided that Bastille’s typical target audience are in the lower middle class or the working class. They are most likely to be underachievers. This is because they like the relaxed lifestyle that they lead and do not strive to improve it. They are incredibly social and enjoy being in crowds and meeting new people at festivals and gigs which makes them very happy. They tend to prefer the summer season rather than winter as they are able to go to festivals, drink and socialise with friends whilst relaxing in the atmosphere which they enjoy most. They care more about their social group of friends than they do anybody else. They aim to lead a simplistic lifestyle with not much hassle involved.
Overall, music record labels exist to make a profit from the artists that are signed to their record labels. Therefore to make a profit, they have to use demographic data to find out information such as fans ages’, gender, income, social class and education to target them specifically. However, this information isn’t enough and they also have to use psychographic information to find out about peoples likes/dislikes, lifestyles, personalities and beliefs to enable them to direct the specific fan base. If record labels such as EMI, get the mix of information correct, they are likely to make a great deal of money from the continuing success of Bastille.