Target Audience

Target Audience

There are different types of rap which will appeal to different audiences. However, the main target audience for artists would be wealthy teens, predominately males. They would target wealthy children because in today's day and age, not many people actually buy music, they download a lot of it for free. Really, it's only rich kids that ask their parents for money to buy music, this is why a lot of artists target people with money. This is common across all genres of music, not just rap. 

Generally rap is aimed at teenage boys to adults between the ages of 16 - 27. This is the target audience because a lot of people in that age bracket can relate to the music because they are at the age where they are heavily involved with women, partying, enjoying life, gangs, violence and just the stresses of life really. This is why they can easily relate and they can link it to certain times in their lives and memories. Also, the image of rap is a big thing and you will find a lot of people who listen to rap music do try and copy the image that is portrayed and will try and dress like their idols/role models, and even to an extent, act like them! 

Most artists try and get their music heard by as many people as possible, not just the primary audience. This is because the more people that hear their music, they will earn a higher amount of money and at the end of that day, that is what it is all about. This is also a reason why a lot of rappers are now turning mainstream. They know that if they stay underground, a lot of people download their music for free off of the internet and they are loosing money by doing this, so if they turn mainstream, their songs will be playing on radio stations and they will earn money this way. By doing this, the target audience changes as well. The reason for the target audience changing is that people who listen to radio stations such as BBC Radio 1 may not be into underground rap and so they have to change their target audience to people who listen to the radio  so that they will appreciate it and will listen more. Artist need it to appeal to them otherwise they will not listen to their music and they will not be making money this way either. 

Rap is heavily linked with a gang culture. People a lot of the time automatically associate gangs with young black teens, which is not necessarily true. Because of this stereotype, people would normally expect to see a black male on the front of a rap magazine. It is not often you would see a white rapper on the front of a magazine that is about rap. A big reason for this is that there are not a lot of white rappers around. However, Eminem is an example of a white rapper and if you saw him on the cover of a magazine you would not be shocked. 

Rap is not really targeted at women because a lot of the time, the lyrics are about doing sexual things with women and a lot of women would find it offensive and would not appreciated the way they are talked about in rap. 

Examples

Straight away by looking at this magazine cover you can see that it will be linked with violence. You don't even have to read any of the sell lines, you can see by the way he has a gun held to his throat that it is violent. Also, the tattoo's all over his body and face that these may be gang related tattoo's and they may represent something to do with violence and their past. This magazine cover would appeal to the target audience because it is something a lot of teens would be interested in and would pick up. A lot of people who may actually not be interested that are in this age range may just pretend to like rap because of peer pressure and may also buy the magazine to fit in with their friends and all the people around them. The red text on the cover links with danger and blood, something that is a common theme across this genre and people will understand it. All together, I think that this is a good magazine cover as it will sell to the target audience and does show an image of the genre.

This is another example of a rap music magazine. This is different to most other magazines to do with this genre because Eminem, the person who is the main image, is white. Like I said earlier, you will not often find a white artist on the front of a magazine. This is purely because there are not many white rappers at all. Also, it does not give of the correct image. However, I think this magazine cover does work well because of the pose that Eminem is doing. He looks very serious and like you wouldn't want to get on his bad side. A lot of rappers give of a tough image and give a message that you better be careful when dealing with them. Just like in the other example, red is a widely used colour. The red and black theme represents hell; a not very nice place to be and a struggle, which is also a rappers life, or how they show it to be anyway. You see that on a lot of rap magazines, it is very crowded, there is not a lot of space and everything is worked around the main image. This could show their hectic lifestyles. Again, I think this is a good magazine cover for the target audience as it is very good.

On rap magazines, you will not often find the artist smiling in the image, they will be posing in a solid way a lot of the time and will not give a soft image to rap. 

Taking all this into account, my target audience will be teens between the ages of 16 - 27 as well. This is because a lot of music made by rappers is sold to this audience. They would be predominately male because not many women are into rap. And finally, my magazine would be quite mainstream as it would be more popular with a wider range of people listening or reading my magazine, and it would be making more money. I do think that mainstream rap would also be easier to portray myself.