Demographics, Psychographics and Representation

 Demographics are statistics about a group of people. These statistics usually include;Age, Location, Gender, Income level, Education level, Occupation and Ethnic background. Demographic audience profiles can be created, this is where audiences are categorised according to their education level and income e.g Upper middle class. 

In contrast psychographics allow audiences to be categorised according to their personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. 

From the music videos I analysed, the only artist I could find on 'YouGov' was Sade. For her music video I looked at, 'By your side' I felt like it targeted the middle class and 25-40 year old age range at it's time (demographic wise). The video made me think this because it doesn't show lots of obvious signs of wealth and therefore doesn't appeal to the younger generations, as well as being quite slow paced which may lose the attention of a younger viewer. in addition I don't think it was made to appeal to much older generations as the imagery was a bit surreal so might not appeal to the 'Resigned groups'. The video also may not be aimed at the 'Aspirer' as it isn't showing lots of signs of wealth and luxury and in turn may be more tailored towards the reformer as the song and video show different forms of success and fulfilment. 

All music videos present to us an artificial and constructed version of reality. In doing this, the producers have filtered and usually distorted real life in some way in a process if careful mediation. For representation to be meaningful to audiences there has to be a collective understanding of places, situations, people, ideas etc.

This means that subsequently there are ideologies behind them.Certain ideologies can be encoded into texts and others can be left out. 

Theorist Richard Dyer(1983) posed these questions. Although Dyer famously wrote about film, his questions can also be asked about music videos. 

Today I'll be applying these questions to the 3 music videos I analysed. Firstly, as I have already found the typical Sade listener's demographics I'll look at her video first. 

I think the director has tried to distort reality by simplifying it down to the essentials such as food, shelter, warmth and love(appeals to reformers.) Which they contrast by showing the artist with her simplistic journey and background surrounded by a busy and bustling city. The director's ideology is clearly to live in a more pure and minimalistic way, only focussing on what they find important. This implies a deviant and atypical view on the real world, regardless of wealth and age(the tree house scene,)as well as race and gender. 

I feel like this video is speaking to the entire audience, whether old or young, rich or poor as it is a large message that could apply to anyone who has the facilities to watch the video. However by showing the signs of beauty and purity I think it could also appeal to the older generations who may value these more, even with resigned ideologies. 

In response to this representation I feel like the viewer could feel inspired to live a more basic and centralised lifestyle, yet I think the majority of viewers will probably just feel a stronger connection to the artist and her music as the song matches very well with the video.

Whilst there are recognisable stereotypes such as the locations and her actions I feel like they aren't intended the stereotype and overall just add to the overall narrative and feel of the video.