Evaluation 3

How do your products engage with the audience and would your work be distributed as real media products?

Demographic

Our target audience falls under the audience for Trap music, so between the ages of 16 to 25. The older ages are our target, as Trap music gets played in clubs often, and is often played in the US. The younger ages are also targeted because Trap music is on the rise on internet, specifically Youtube and Soundcloud, meaning while the audience who are under the legal age are unable to go to clubs to hear the music are able to listen to Trap online.

The above is from observation however. We used YouGov as a foundation for this research as well. While Trap does not seem to show up on the website, we used the artists Skrillex and Diplo as our references for searches, as they are the duo who make Jack U, our reference for our target audience.



The age groups of both rtists are fairly similar. Our target audience seem liberal and more open towards discovering new things and also their sense in branding of clothing is similar to how thought of them being.

From this we were able to dissect what might interest our audience.

Codes and Conventions

Music Video

A lot of Trap music videos seem to revolve around drug use, the visuals that are commonly seen in Trap music videos seem to serve the purpose of creating a visual representation of the effects of intoxication. Here are a few examples:

'Eung Freestyle' - The rappers in the video are seen drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.

'It G Ma' - Again, the rappers are seen drinking alcohol.

While these animations and effects are great eye-catchers, they have become the convention of representing the altered state of mind. We wanted to use this fun and creative convention for our own to attract our audience.

The dark tone we gave our music video, under the dark lighting and colour, was to add an air of mysteriousness to our music video. The artists were not the faces of the music video, the effects, shots, and execution were. This enigma was used to hopefully trigger the audience's seemingly curious sense of nature, hopefully leading them to find out more about our brand.

The name Trap music is given comes from the concept of being 'trapped'. Drug use can be an addictive nature, where one finds it hard to escape from the culture, thus making it a trap. We hoped to somehow replicate this in our music video, as the visuals and effects are so vivid that while they may seem to create not much sense to the audience, they are enrapturing, making it hard to look away.

Our priority on the products was mostly on the music video, for the reason of being able to upload it to Youtube. There are many music promotion channels on Youtube, and with this we could up t he exposure. Focusing on the music video allowed us to really make an impression right at the source of where the audience access music they listen to.

Website

Because of the online presence electronic music has, we need to make sure our online profile is what we envisioned. We decided to use a similar approach to the music video; create a dark tone in terms of colour, and any vivid use of colour and bright lights are almost abstract. We wanted to emphasise the sense of an enigma, again hoping to trigger the audience's curiosity.

In terms of design, we knew we had to sell a style, not just the music on itself. This falls under the sense of style called urban street fashion.

We had to make our clothing very simple, in a similar manner to Owsla's clothing.

Because our demographic uses the internet for music streaming, information and just about everything else to do with music, our website had to be the provider of information. The tour dates were important to help our audience keep up to date.

Digipak

Since trap is very urban, I placed emphasis on the urban setting in the digipak and also added urban aspects into our digipak. The prime example is the city in the digipak. With the city area, it was supposed to be urban thus we added that into the digipak since our audience will be attracted to it.

We used Jack U's album 'Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack U' as our reference for our front cover. The montage of photos, in our case graphics, gives an almost DIY effect, suggesting the sense of independence we wanted to convey.

 

 

David Buckingham's audience theory

 

We feel that our music video is perfect in terms of appealing to both a non-focused viewer and a focused viewer. Our music video is filled with animations, scribbles, lighting effects that are fast paced and vivid, and a variety of shots. The editing has had a lot of attention, as cuts are happening everywhere. While the audience may not be able to understand the meaning behind the video, they can still find entertainment in the music video without meaning.

The focused audience however are given the opportunity to decode the message we create. This can be through our use of colour, camera angles, and portrayals.

 

Plan for releases, launches, in order to ensure success for our artists: