Audience Theory and Research

After giving some surveys to different age groups, genders and ethnicities we found that our target audience were young children and females. They access these types of music videos through watching it on TV or going on to YouTube. We found that young girls use it as a form of escapism because it is really relaxing and calm. We found that young children listen to it because a lot of young stars fit in the Pop genre through the type of music they sing. For example Justin Beiber. Children listen to Pop music because they can understand it rather than something like Rap music were the lyrics are very fast.
Audience get a sense of their identity from music videos. For example they may see Cheryl Cole and think that they want to be strong willed and dress in that way for watching the music video ‘Fight for this love’. Also another example could be that now in a lot of music videos they glamorise the criminal lifestyle and as a result of this crime rates have gone up because the youth have been influenced through watching these types of music videos. But do we all react the same way when we watch a music video? This is a theory that Stuart Hall came up with ‘The reception Theory.’ This theory is that we all interpret a text and receive in different ways depending on age, gender class and ethnicity. Stuart Halls say that the text is encoded by the producer and decode by the reader. For example if a child watched Lady gaga music videos they would think ‘Why is this lady being so rude’ but if a teenage boy watched the same thing he might think ‘Wow she’s hot.’ So we all interpret music videos in different ways. But Stuart says how the producer can position the audience in way that there can be a certain amount of agreement in what the code means. Known as the ‘Preferred or more dominant reading’