Planning - Audience

As the original artist for the song we picked is Ed Sheeran I decided to research his audience a little bit.

The website fanpop is a network website that enables people to engage in fun clubs to share and connect with each other. Ed Sheeran has his own fan page in this website and I decided to have a look at it. It's important to have in mind that the website itself already has an audience of young teenagers (younger than 16) and might be more appealing to girls, so I will be looking at other websites too.

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/ed-sheeran-x

Looking at the people who are participating of Ed Sheeran's fan club, I have concluded that they are mostly girls aged around 13-15 years old. I have taken the profile of two girls considered the 'top contributors' to have a look at:

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The similarities between them are obvious. They are both young girls at the age of 14, who might be even considered sightly childish - they both use internet-like symbols in their names which make hearts ('<3' '♥'). One of them is from the UK and the other from Canada which shows that Ed Sheeran's success has spread across the world too. Both girls are connected to other social networking websites such as Tumblr. They also watch series that appeal to teenagers such as 'Inbetweeners' and 'The Vampire Diaries', which reinforces the idea that Ed Sheeran appeals to a young audience, since these series might appeal to other teenagers older than 14. And from the other artists they like, we can see how they stick to the pop genre.

Twitter is a popular social network which is like a mini blog where you can write what you are thinking, doing, etc with a limit of 140 characters. Ed Sheeran uses Twitter  because he can promote himself by creating a closer relationship with his fans who are following him on Twitter. He can directly inform about concerts, events, new releases, etc as well as he can add a bit of his personal life in Twitter. This gives a feeling of intimacy to the fans.

Click to open Ed Sheeran's Twitter.

Twitter however, has a wider audience than fanpop. Mostly targeted at young people (let's say 15-25) of both genders and of any ethnic background, and although not as much, adults may use it too. Ed Sheeran has a total of 3,454,258 followers. Looking through the first pages of his followers' list I have noticed that the female audience is still bigger than the male audience (62 female profiles against 39 male profiles following Ed Sheeran). There is also a more evident variety in gender and age. I have picked a few followers to look at at:

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In his MySpace profile the audience is similar to his Twitter audience. However,  the social network MySpace has a more specific audience of music makers and lovers, which consequently increases the audience age average to mostly over 16 years old. 

From the comments in his MySpace page we have an equal number of male and female. Most of them also provide the age, which as expected, it's 16+. In MySpace we get a bigger audience of people in their 20s. I can also point out a fan from Brazil and a fan from NY, which again implies that although his music is targeted more at White/British people, it also appeals to other nationalities. Another social network with a similar audience to MySpace is SoundCloud, since it is specifically aimed at music makers and it also tends to be consisted of people in their 20s. Looking at the first page of followers in Ed Sheeran's SoundCloud profile, I notice that the audience is consisted of both genders equally (being 43 male profiles against 42 female profiles following Ed Sheeran). I have picked some profiles to have a closer look. 

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My conclusion about Ed Sheeran's SoundCloud audience is that it is wider than other social networks because the age range, gender variety and nationality variety is broader. Although the age is not provided, I can assume that the age range is broader due to the profile pictures, in which some look young and some look older than usual.

Finally, I will look at Ed Sheeran's Facebook page and the active fans. Looking at the comments of his posts, I can conclude that most of his Facebook fans are young girls (aged between 15-17) and mostly White/British.

However, there are some other girls with different ethnic backgrounds or nationalities, there are some girls older than 17 and there are some lost boys in the comments too. 

This is the profile of a typical Ed Sheeran's fan (found in the comments of Ed Sheeran's Facebook fanpage). Looking at her 'Likes' page I can draw some conclusions about her interests. Other artists that she listens to include Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Enrique Inglesias, etc. She seems to be more attracted to the pop genre, although she has 'liked' other artists from different genres such as Eminem, Akon, Metallica and Bob Marley, which define her as eclectic but with a slight preference to pop music. Knowing that she is eclectic is not a surprise since Ed Sheeran's music seem to overlap various different genres and create a quite unique beat, like in 'The City'. TV shows that she likes include Modern Family, The Walking Dead and Family Guy, which are not so teen targeted. However, books that she likes include Harry Potter and Pretty Little Liars, which are more teen targeted. Activities and interests include dancing and travelling.

From all this research I have carried out in many different social networks about Ed Sheeran's fans, my conclusion is that the core audience is consisted of mainly girls aged 14-18, White/British, students who like to go out with friends in the park, engage in social networking websites and watch teen TV series like any other common teenage girl, and they are mainstreamers, particularly fond of the pop genre. The wider audience is young people aged between 13-25, students of both genders and various different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, with an eclectic taste in music, who like travelling, socialising, watching TV and are part of the crowd. 

Our artist Ray Jones, consequently will have a similar target audience. Because of the song 'The City' that is classified as indie pop (indie due to the guitar), I'd say it helps to appeal to both genders since pop is particularly more attractive to female and indie is particularly more attractive to male. However, the fact that our artist is male will appeal to a bigger female audience.