Research - Target Audience

Having a target audience is a must for all artists. Without a target audience, an act is aiming their music at all genres and ages, whereas with a target audience, they can achieve success within a given sector of the music audience.

Miley Cyrus - Breakout
Breakout was the first major album release from Miley Cyrus, after hitting her Hannah Montana fame. From this, she identified that her target audience were girls under 14. She created the album to be 'bubblegum pop', something that was on its way back, thanks to the likes of the Jonas Brothers and Cyrus. She previewed tracks from the album on 'Disney Channel Games', which fitted her demographic perfectly.

As she was effectively relaunching herself from Hannah Montana into Miley Cyrus, she rebranded her website, all her promotional material didn't mention the name 'Hannah Montana', which left her in good stead to leave the Montana stage behind, and completely become Cyrus. She announced her tour, where the times of each were early, allowing for her target audience to actually attend. She also performed on the likes of the 'Teen Choice Awards', and this enabled her to get good TV coverage for her audience.

Madonna - Celebration
Madonna's greatest hits album, 'Celebration', was released in 2009, and was backed by a massive TV publicity campaign, but Madonna didn't actually, in fact, do any interviews here in the UK. Her adverts on the TV featured all the tracks that made her famous, including 'Material Girl', 'Like A Virgin', 'Vogue', and '4 Minutes' - the tracks that cover all her big hits throughout the decades, which introduced her to different audiences. For this reason, her target audience is really people under the age of 50. The album got to number one in this country within a week, so the TV campaigns obviously proved to work. All posters and emails featured the same picture - the album cover - showing continuity throughout all her promotional material.

Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3

Jay-Z's 11th studio album, 'The Blueprint 3', was released in 2009, along with a massive publicity campaign. Jay-Z has already secured his target having been involved in the music industry for over 20 years, but by publicising the album so heavily, he was able to get even more people interested in his music. He released a preview track before announcing the album, which gave many people an indication of where the album was heading. His trademark three stripes appear on all the promotional material - album cover, posters, and the website was completely redesigned to reflect this. Also, by collaborating with artists such as Alicia Keys, Kanye West and Beyonce, he was able to get into different markets and get other people to hear his music. His target audience is primarily teens and under 30's, but this is growing as more people hear his music.