Feeder #1:

This assignment is designed to get you thinking in a structured way about exactly what sorts of clues you receive from the various forms of content within a single CD and how these different elements help impart or at least suggest information about the audience that the artist is trying to reach.

Take any CD of your choice (preferably one by a single artist or group that has printed lyrics included with it on the album sleeve) and do a thorough examination of the contents thereof, looking for specific clues about the intended audience for that album. Anything specifically found on the CD is fair game for this analysis. Similarly, anything not found on the CD is off-limits for this assignment. Therefore, do not resort to generalizations, "common knowledge" or information you have from another source (it might be better for you to do a CD about which you know nothing in order to limit the number of presumptions you bring to your analysis).

In essay form, collect as many clues about audience as you can from the CD you have chosen. Factors of audience to look for include gender, race, economic status, age, geographical region, ethnic group, social group, common interest group, etc. (be aware that this list is not exclusive, by any means--any factor you can justify with evidence from the CD is allowable). Find at least five (5) specific pieces of evidence that you believe demonstrate what the intended audience for this CD is. Make sure that you explain as fully as you can what about that particular lyric, artwork or song title gave you that impression. In other words, make your thought process apparent to your reader. Don't simply make claims like "the photograph on the CD cover that shows Prince wearing only his underwear shows that he is marketing the album towards women." Keep asking yourself why you believe the claims you are making to be true and then explain your reasons in writing so that your readers can also see the connections.

This is mostly an exercise in theorizing (in other words, don't be afraid to go out on a limb a little), but you should also make sure that you use your reasoning skills in creating a convincing argument for what you are writing. Your paper should be at least 2 full pages in length in 12-point double-spaced type and fastened with either a staple or a paper clip.

Due: Friday, Sept. 4 in class (one copy)

Feeder #2:

Some of the most prominent sources of contextual information about music and musicians are the host of music-oriented magazines on the market. We've looked at some examples of these in class, but there are literally dozens of them available in the library, at newsstands or at large bookstores like Barnes and Noble. Like the artists whose music they discuss, these magazines aim their product at a very specific audience, mostly in order to give advertisers some assurance that buying ad space in their publications will be likely to reach an audience that will purchase their products or services.

For this assignment, find a copy of a music magazine of your choice (if you're not sure about what magazines to look for, ask me--you don't have to use the better-known magazines like Rolling Stone, Spin, or Vibe, but you're welcome to) and subject it to the same kind of analysis of audience that you did in the first feeder. You can use anything contained within and including the covers (advertisements, articles, artwork, inserts, typefaces, color choice, etc.) to conduct your analysis, looking for clues as to what demographic cross-section of readers this audience has. Essentially, you're trying to discover who the "average" reader of the publication you've chosen is. This will--more often than not--be much more difficult than simply "young, white men" or "older African-American women" so avoid generalizations and try to arrive at more convincing conclusions by supporting your points with evidence from the magazine. Remember, your audience has probably not seen the particular issue of the magazine you're talking about, so you will have to explain your source material in detail.

Your paper should be at least 2 full pages in length in 12-point double-spaced type and fastened with either a staple or a paper clip.

Due: Friday, September 11 in class (one copy)

UNIT ONE FINAL PROJECT ASSIGNMENT:

The emphasis of our examination of the audience of musical artists has so far been on determining the ways in which lyrics, artwork, photographs, layout and other aspects of a marketing scheme serve to give clues to the potential buyer as to what they should expect of the musical product contained on a given CD.

In this assignment, you will be using the skills you have developed about determining target audiences and utilize it in a practical manner. You will have to be very specific in your use of examples and confident that the claims you are making about an artist's marketing potential are correct.

Select a particular CD (you may use the one you used for the first feeder assignments) and put yourself in the position of being the business manager for the artist or group you have chosen. Your assignment is to write an essay that would convince a music publication (Rolling Stone, Spin, Vibe, New Musical Express, whichever magazine you choose to address) to run a feature on the artist you represent.

In this essay, you should define the audience that your artist reaches (using the kind of analysis that you have done in the first two assignments, not assumptions based on what you know about the album sales) so that the prospective reader (presumably, a magazine editor) knows how to properly represent your artist in their article. You should not assume that the magazine's editor knows anything at all about your artist even if you choose a very popular band (if you need some rationale for this, you can tell yourself that he/she is brand-new, okay?). You need to persuade the editor with your argumentation, and thus, you will need to provide all of the necessary information to make that argument effective.

Don't get carried away in playing the role of a business manager (that is, don't simply fill up space on the page with the polite greetings and formal language of a business letter). The point of envisioning the assignment in this manner is to give you an example of how this sort of analysis could conceivably be used in a real-world setting. I don't want to see how well you impersonate a business manager, I want to see how convincingly you can make a complex argument.

A good essay will:

1. Give examples from the past work of the artist in question to show his/her/their established image and promotional approach (that is, what image has the band put forth in the past and is this image changing?)
2. Make conclusions, based on these examples, about the "typical" person buying this artist's work (and therefore, theoretically interested in buying a magazine with an article about that artist)
3. Convincingly argue that the target audience of the artist corresponds closely with that of the magazine you choose to proposition. In fulfilling this part of the essay, you'll have to do some of the same kind of analysis of the magazine (based on its contents, images, artwork, articles, etc.) that you did with your artist.

First Draft Due: Friday, September 18 in class
Note change from original assignment

Final Draft Due: Monday, September 28 in class