THE

IMPORTANCE
OF MUSIC
VIDEOS

The Research Hand Book

Jodie Lee Pope

CONTENTS
Section 1
Types of Research
1. Qualitative Research
2. Quantitative Research

Section 2
Methods Of Research
1.
2.
3.
4.

Secondary Research
Primary Research
Data Gathering agencies
Self-Generated

Section 3
Purpose of Research

Section 4
Bibliography

Section 1 - Types of Research

Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is research that requires a much more in-depth
response, it allows you to ask personal questions and collect more data
on people, this is best used in T.V shows when they get the personal
response from viewers, It allows them to find out about how some people
feel about a certain story line and weather they think it will be
appropriate, for example, EastEnders regularly like to know whose
watching their program and what they think about it and the current story
line.
Examples of Qualitative Research in media are: Song Reviews, fanzine
website opinions.
A very effective way of doing qualitative research in the music industry is
analyzing all sorts of reviews in widely subscribed channels , magazines ,
Rolling stones NME and Q for example as well as MTV and Radio station
reviews such as Capital , Heart , Radio 1. Theses reviews will provide all
sorts of information from the hottest downloaded singles to the most
popular album at that time. Doing qualitative research helps give much
more of an insight to the audiences minds. It is a very reliable source of
information as of course, with no audience there can be no music industry
and so the Publics/audiences opinion is the most important factor.
Qualitative research is about finding out not just what people think but
why they think it. Its about getting people to talk about their opinions so
you can understand their motivations and feelings.
Face-to-face interviews and group discussions are the best way to get this
kind of in-depth feedback. Qualitative research can be valuable when you
are developing new products or coming up with new marketing initiatives
and you want to test reactions and refine your approach.
Meidacom.co.uk say that Qualitative research investigates the
motivation, attitudes, value systems and cultures that compile a person's
make-up, all of which drives a person to make a decision in a particular
way.

The advantages of qualitative research are that a client is able to

understand the motivating factors about a certain type of consumer, and
therefore influence them into responding positively to a client's
advertising message.

Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is about asking people (the potential audience) for
their opinions in a structured way so that you can produce hard facts and
statistics to guide you. To get reliable statistical results, its important to
survey people in fairly large numbers and to make sure they are a
representative sample of your target market. In the case of music videos
for example and generating ale sin the music industry.
Quantitative research is widely based on figures. So a simple way to
obtain the certain information you need, for example if you were trying to
determine what where the 20 most popular hits in a certain week. You
would research the statistics. You would go out to find numbers such as ,
most popular downloads on iTunes , most listened to tracks on Spotify in
that week , conduct a survey over a large sum of people , asking them
what their favorite song is .For example, here is list of the top 20
downloaded tracks on iTunes, this week.
From pieces of gathered information like these, record labels and
production companies can determine what songs are the most popular at
the time and what tracks that are worth putting time into promoting,
making music videos about for example.

Section 2 Methods of Research

Secondary Research

Secondary research (also known as desk research) involves the

summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research rather than
primary research, where data is collected from, for example, research
subjects or experiments.
For example, MTV would need to do secondary research to determine how
to set out there official UK top 40 for example. They could go by say
iTunes, Spotify statistics of most played, downloaded tracks and so intern
they would place the tracks in the order at which from they had been
downloaded from the least out of the 40 to the most ( The Number 1 in
that particular time frame.)
Primary research
Primary research is any type of research that you go out and collect
yourself. Examples include surveys, interviews, observations, and
ethnographic research. A good researcher knows how to use both primary
and secondary sources in her writing and to integrate them in a cohesive
fashion. With Primary research, there is no information for you, you have
to go out and collect the data yourself. In the media industry this would
mean you have to carry out your own questionnaires and surveys asking
the public on a large scale their preferences, music tastes, favourite films,
genres of music in general and it could be quite time consuming. Another
method of primary information that is widely used for big firms is focus
groups. With this method of research, the answers can be somewhat
controlled. This is because for surveys , questionnaires , interviews and
focus groups can be made up of closed answer questions so that the
statistics of the answers can be kind-of pre-chosen by the party
conducting the research because they will carefully select the questions
in order to achieve their desired result.

Data Gathering Agencies

Data gathering agencies are corporations that gather raw information for
you, BARB is an example of this. Another example is the R.A.J.A.R is an
organisation that stands for radio joint audience research. This
organisation measures radio audiences in the Uk. It is a joint name as it is
owned by the bbc and the radio centre and there is about 310 radio
stations on the survey.

Section 3 Purpose Of research

There are different types of research conducted for different purposes in
the media. There are 3 main forms of research undertaken by the media
industries. The first is called market research, the second production
research and the third, Audience research.
Market research refers to the collection and analysis of information about
the market within which a particular product will compete with other
products for an audience and for revenue. It is basically just
investigations into the way that products could produce income by
looking at the demands of consumers.
Production research is research conducted to inform the production
process of a media product eg. Background information, locations, legal
and ethical requirements. For example, the music industry.
The music Industry can actually be thought of as 1 humungous scale
constant competition.

Bibliography
http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/market-research/what-is-qualitative-researchhttp://mediacom.co.uk/en/faq-page/our-services/what-is-mediacom%E2%80%99s-approach-to-qualitativeresearch.aspx
https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/charts/songs/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_research
http://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/FEAndVocational/CreativeandMedia/BTECLevel
%203/BTECNationalInMediaProduction/Samples/Samplematerial/BTEC_Nat_Media_Unit01.pdf