Audience Profiling - Revisited

I have decided to revisit my audience-profiling task, in order to examine a more relevant artist to the one I decided to profile, which was Jessie J. Although I found a lot of things out about Jessie J and her fan base, she is not linked closely enough to The Lafontaines for any of this research to be helpful.

For this reason, I have decided to profile The Lafontaines.

Assumptions:

Gender: I don’t feel that there would be a noticeable difference in gender. Although the band is male, this would not dissuade women from listening to them. Their songs seem to address issues that face most people or irritate a larger proportion of people. Their song, Shark In The Water, addresses the issue of women being overly promiscuous for attention – but not in a misogynistic way, as the lyrics also pay attention to the fact that some women feel intimidated and overpowered by their female friends. Similarly, the song is from a male perspective, attracting male listeners.

Age: I would put the age of fans for The Lafontaines as anywhere between 14 and 30, but probably falling mainly between the ages of 18 and 24. This group is likely to be able to access gigs and festivals much more easily due to the lesser financial pressures put on them at this age than when they have a house and a family, and equally any younger than 18 may mean that they cannot access the gigs or have enough money to travel to see them.

Fashion: I feel that the fans of The Lafontaines most likely wear average clothes, much like the band members, who can be seen wearing t-shirts, jeans and shirts. They also have been known to wear suits at some of their gigs, such as when they performed their show ‘Club Fontaine’ in early April 2013 wearing full Morning Suits complete with bow ties.

            The lead vocalist, Kerr Okan, has a fairly sophisticated hairstyle, which is slicked back on top and shorter around the back and sides. However, this is not to say that all fans would replicate this; Jamie Keenan, the drummer and occasional vocalist, has a much more laid back style, with relatively long, wavy hair that is much more ‘scruffy’ than Okan’s.

Social Practices: For a less well-known band like The Lafontaines, it is important to have good social networking set up. They have a Facebook page, which helps them to reach fans, as well as a Twitter. They have a page on Bandcamp, as well as a Tumblr page, which doubles as their website, and a Myspace page (although this looks fairly abandoned). They also have a YouTube channel. 

As a result, I think fans will be fairly technologically literate and be able to follow the band on these various platforms. This helps them to spread their music too, as fans might share around links to songs they enjoy. Facebook has a feature which shares a story, such as a person liking a page, so people who do not know of the band might see something saying “John Jones has liked The Lafontaines” and then click on the link to check out what John Jones is interested in.

I think that fans of this band might also listen to radio stations such as BBC Radio 1, which plays a more varied range of music than Kiss or Capital FM, and has played the band before on late night shows. The Lafontaines also performed on the BBC Introducing stage at T in the Park in 2013.

Interests: I would assume that fans of this band would most likely be interested in fairly standard activities, such as meeting friends and socialising. I would also assume that they enjoy going to gigs, since the band still attracts a lot of fans through gigging in small venues around the Glasgow area from where they originated.

Fans might also enjoy listening to similar music and doing activities seen in the bands videos, such as going to festivals. I think they might enjoy listening to music of the genres which The Lafontaines’ draw influences from, such as from rock, hip-hop and pop genres.

Below this point is the raw text I used to create this post.

Profiling:

I created a survey on Surveymonkey and I have been contacting some people who I know are a fan of the band, as well as some people who follow them on Twitter. I am now waiting to get some responses. 

I am aiming to get at least 10 responses. Although I know this will not be wholly representative, this will give me a slight indication into their fan base.

Gender: 
I took a brief look through The Lafontaines Twitter page and took a random sample of 100 followers. From this, I found that there was somewhat of a gender divide, although it was not too severe; there were 38 male fans in the sample to 62 female fans. I was surprised to see this as I had always felt that the band was fairly gender neutral, if not more suited towards males.
The results from my survey supported this, with 7 out of my 10 respondents being female and the other 3 male. I think I may have had a less gender biased result if my survey had been more publicised. I had difficulty in finding an appropriate medium to share my survey on, and mainly relied on people I followed on Twitter who I knew were fans. I also asked some of my friends, of which two were male and two female. 
I don't think that this will effect what I have planned to do in my music video, however. Although the central focus of it is male, I don't think it would disengage a female audience. I am trying to convey a universal message. There will be some female characters in my video, unlike The LaFontaines original video for 'Light Up The Background' which was featured men quite heavily.

Age:
Again, my expectations were slightly off for the target audience. It emerged that a majority of The LaFontaines fans were actually in the 13-17 age bracket (50%). The second largest group was 18-24 year olds, which is the group I had expected to be the largest.
This actually seems to fit better with the actor I have in mind for my music video - he is now 16 years old and therefore an audience aged 13-17 will be able to relate to him better than a person towards the higher end of the 18-24 age bracket might, since there are very different things going on in their lives. For instance, a 24 year old is less likely to be feeling peer pressure over deviant behaviour than a 14 year old. I also had one respondent in the 36-41 age bracket. Since there is only one respondent of this age I cannot generalise and say that they appeal to an older target audience, but I think this reflects the fact that some members of the audience are older and that I should not only target my video towards a younger audience. This audience member may have children that are the same age as the character in my video, and this may be of interest to them.

Fashion:
I asked the question - "How would you best describe your style" and got a fairly varied range of answers back.
This says to me that The LaFontaines are a band that does not attract one stereotypical group of people. Bands of a more defined genre like Bring Me The Horizon may have fans with a much more distinct look.
The most popular answers for this question were 'smart' and 'individual' which I feel are good descriptions of the way the band dress as well. Whilst they may dress in smart clothes, they are fairly individual in doing this because most bands would probably prefer to be more comfortable and less likely to overheat when they are playing live.
However, there was no clear winner when it comes to what the audience dresses like. Therefore I do not need to worry about my actor dressing to fit the audience profile - because just dressing as himself should mean that he meets this.

Social Practices:
Social Networking:
I also asked the question - 'Which of the following social networking websites do you actively use? Check all that apply.' 
I found that the most popular sites were all those that The LaFontaines had accounts on. This is not so much a question that relates to the music video, but it helps me to build a profile of the typical audience member.
The most popular sites were Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Sites like Tumblr and Vine has reasonable success but Myspace was not a site that any of the audience members used.
I think that the three most popular networks are ones that The LaFontaines can use most effectively to help them spread their music and help them to gain popularity.
These results tell me that fans of The LaFontaines are technologically literate and well connected. Every respondent has a Facebook account and 90% have a Twitter account.
I have planned a scene where the main character in my video is watching a video that he has been sent, which shows a political cartoon. I think the fact that 80% of respondents have an active YouTube account will help the character appeal to them even more.

Radio:
As I expected, the majority of fans has listened to BBC Radio 1 within the last month.
They had also listened to stations such as Capital FM, a London-based radio station that plays mainly pop music. Kiss FM is a national radio network that plays a mix of pop and hip-hop music. I think that this reflects the hybrid nature of The LaFontaines' music.


Musical Preferences:
I also asked the question 'Which of the following genres of music do you most enjoy? Check all that apply.'
The most popular answer here was rock (70%), followed by indie and alternative.
No genre had no fans. I think this is important because again, it reflects the fact that The LaFontaines' music is a hybrid of different musical styles and therefore people will like it for different reasons and listen to it to fulfill different gratifications. Where some people listen to the band because the enjoy the fast paced, high adrenaline music, others listen to it for the meaning behind the lyrics. Others, as I found out with my qualitative question, enjoyed the band because they found certain members attractive, such as Kerr Okan, the lead vocalist.
One respondent added in the 'other' box that they enjoyed other genres, such as dubstep, metal, garage and hardstyle. This suggests to me that fans of The LaFontaines have a very varied taste in music, supported by the fact that some people were also fans of Blues, Classic & Opera and Country
music, which I did not expect to see any fans for.

One of my questions asked whether or not fans had seen the band perform live. I assumed that a majority of fans would have seen them live, as this is an important source of exposure for new bands.
There was a draw between fans having seen the band once and not having seen them perform at all, each of which made up around 30% of the answers.
This tells me that not all fans of The LaFontaines have seen them live and that they may have found out about them from other sources - such as word of mouth or through social media. These are popular streams for publicising music and it seems The LaFontaines may well have made the most of these.

In the same vein, I asked whether fans had gone to a festival before, and if not, if they would like to.
40% had been to a festival before, and a further 40% had not, but had an interest in going to one. No one fan had no interest in going to a festival, which I feel implies that the audience are a fan of live music and the festival scene.
I think this, combined with the previous question, is reflective of the fact the band mainly tours around Scotland and the North of England. If a fan lives further down south it is harder for them to see The LaFontaines.
This is a problem that I will be facing in my music video. Most new bands feature in their music videos, and the fact that the audience enjoy live music suggests to me that it would be beneficial to include the band in the video.
However, the fact that the band is Scottish and live and tour around the Glasgow area means that I will not be able to include them in my video, as they live 363 miles away and the cost of transporting them down to Norfolk would be huge!
Therefore I will have to include other elements in my music video to make up for the absence of this.

 
This audience research has helped me to build more of a picture about the kind of audience that The LaFontaines has. It appears that they have a much more varied fan base than I originally thought and this means that I can reflect this in my music video. This does not mean that I will not target the video at a specific group, but it does mean that I don't have to be as concerned about my choice of plotline or my actor being a 16-year old boy.