Target Audience Research: What do real audiences consume?

The way audiences consume media in the music industry has changed over the years with the introduction of the internet, there are now many more ways to hear music and to see music videos.

Taken from: ifpi:
 
Overall recorded music revenues grew in Europe and Latin America and continued to stabilise in the US, growing 0.8% in trade terms.

Graph:

The industry's digital revenues grew by 4.3% in 2013 to US$5.9 billion 

Revenues from advertising-supported streaming services, such as YouTube and Vevo, are also growing — up 17.6 per cent in 2013. 
Less people are buying physical formats such as records and CD's with their share declining from 60% to 51% in 2012, However the physical formats still account for the majority of the industry's revenues.

 Where Rock is currently:
- Rock is still quite popular but not as popular as it used to be currently in the UK top 40 chart the most popular songs seem to fall under pop or dance music with only one rock song which is at 37 in the UK top 40. Where as in the the UK Top 40 rock chart you can see that Rock still has some popularity. With a new up and coming artist Royal Blood at no.5 however it is also very reliant on older artists such as Queen, Nickleback, Goo Goo Dolls, Foo Fighters, Bon jovi, Aerosmith, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Green Day and Muse. Here's an example of the UK Rock Top 40 charts and how it is currently looking:

 
 Having a newer rock artist such as Royal Blood at No. 7 and No. 5 on the chart shows that Rock hasn't lost it's popularity as there are still people who listen to Rock music. However the two Royal Blood songs that are on the UK Top 40 chart have dropped down. The Chart does rely quite heavily on older artists as well with Guns and Roses at 12, Queen at 13, Muse at 15 and Bon Jovi at 17 which would make things seem that Rock is slowly dying out as there seems to be less and less new up and coming Rock artists. Although Rock has lost popularity over the years it still is popular and Rock still has an audience people are continuing to listen to Rock music.

Music Videos are also becoming cheaper to produce - "most music videos now cost between $15,000-50,000 to produce" - Passman, where as before music videos would cost around $200-250,000 to produce. The most expensive music video ever made was Michael Jackson's Scream which cost $7 million to produce. However as time has moved on technology has improved and music videos have become much easier to make, artists can now produce music videos for a lot less money.