Media Niche
My media niche is young people of my generation who follow new music acts, playing local venues. I’m interested in the emerging music scene as a niche because of the way social media allows you to connect with the artists and other fans. I think there is a real audience of people like me who are interested in these local acts, and not just their music but their stories and how they are navigating the music industry, especially in the post COVID context. These musicians are not huge stars, they just love sharing their music and they are more than happy to take the time to talk to fans and share their thoughts. This has been one of my personal epiphanies, where I’ve realised that connecting with these musicians, interviewing them, connecting over social media, or seeing them at gigs, is a relatable and enjoyable experience. So, I wanted to connect with a niche that has similar interests and can enjoy this experience, a niche that includes the artists themselves as well as the fans.
Because I have found that these artists are approachable and happy to give interviews, I chose to create a podcast, called “Tuning In” with interviews, bios and stories about local music acts, to tap into that audience niche that is interested in more than just where the gigs are at. Part of my inspiration is other podcasts like Shameless where they discuss celebrity and pop culture news cycles, and the ABC’s Conversations which uses interviews in a narrative style. I was also inspired by other major media entities like Triple J and New Music Express, and the way they use social media as a tool to engage with their listeners.
Introducing my digital artefact to my niche
The intention of my podcast and connected links to Instagram and my blogsite, was to create a space for participants in my media niche to connect on a more personal level with local emerging musicians. Through my digital artefact I was able to gain insights to the audience of the podcast and find connections through Instagram and twitter that helped me understand and observe this media niche.
Through creating an Instagram page linked to my “Tuning In” podcasts I could track the data of my users, focusing on the location and age ranges and of the users. My account attracted 127 followers with just over 50% in Sydney and just under 30% in Wollongong. The age range for over 80% of the followers was 18-24, which is aligned to the audience of people my age who I expected to be interested in my digital artefact.
The podcast itself is on Spotify, which is another platform for connecting the music scene to social media. My most popular episodes were interviews, which had a much higher play rate than my episodes which were bios on artists, without an interview. The interviews were also the most shared, by engaged users. I think this reflects the interest in the artists as individuals, and their stories.
Importantly, social media is crucial to how bands promote themselves. So, connecting with new audiences via my podcast and Instagram, allows members of my media niche to connect with the social media platforms of the bands I’m interviewing.
Autoethnography Academic Research
According to ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’ by Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams & Arthur P. Bochner “autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experiences (ethno)”. This paper reinforced the importance of bringing my personal experience to my research and the process of writing about my own epiphanies, with a style that tells a story with rich descriptions of personal experiences. This insight helped me to embrace the personal aspects of this research and broadened my consideration of what might be relevant content for the research.
This paper also inspired me to consider the way other people may experience similar epiphanies, including through comparisons with existing research. This led me to investigate other autoethnographic research into the music industry.
One of these is a paper by Shane Murphy specifically considering the Australian music scene with a focus on the business model for the digital music industries. Murphy’s study focuses on the business aspects of the digital music industry, while my research considers more of the interpersonal aspects of the music industry. His research however does touch on the importance of social media particularly the concept of social proof, which are the measurable aspects of an artist's social media presence but as a validation of the commercial viability of an artist.
In my context however I would argue that social media connections provide measurable evidence of the interpersonal connection that can exist around a band, regardless of their commercial success. For example, Salted Ham, a band based in Sydney uses Instagram and Facebook as a way to post links to tickets to gigs, clips of their bands’ rehearsal and links to merchandise. But they also use it as a way to connect with their fans, which consists of a lot of their own personal connections and is more than a commercial connection.
The other was an autoethnographic research paper into the local music culture in Northern Colorado, by Andrew Schicke. Schicke’s paper comes from a much less formal and personal place, where he discusses his own experience as a musician. His research was based on interviewing musicians, fans and other people associated with the music industry in his local area. One interesting aspect of his study is that, even though it was written in 2011 before the explosion of social media and DIY music production as a phenomenon, he includes similar discussions of music as a DIY phenomenon. Schicke discusses independent labels and their importance to local music scenes. In particular how such labels grew out of small business “mom and pop” record stores.
For me this was a reminder of how this DIY aspect to music has been a persistent theme in music over the ages, whether it be the historical genesis of blues and roots music, the ‘independent record label’ of decades gone by or the ‘garage band’ phenomenon. In my mind the persistence of DIY in music is all about how musicians get their start, which is about turning a fun hobby into something they can afford to spend more time doing (by getting paid), even if it doesn’t turn into a full-time career.
I personally think that audiences also buy into this ideal, that musicians are people just like them, having fun making music, listening to music and ‘hanging out’ with others in an environment that shares the same ideas. Creating a sense of this interpersonal connection was one way that I hoped to influence this media niche.
Autoethnography Participant Observation
Viewing a musician's audiences through the autoethnographic lens has helped me understand the persona that the artist has created to sell their products whether that be music, graphic design or photography. It was crucial for me to use participant observation as a research method to understand the particular persona traits of artists and how this affects the way that the audience interacts with the artist. The persona traits are also important to observe as it helps to better understand the kinds of people the artist attracts whether or not their fans share music tastes, fashion inspirations or personal hobbies. Through observing bands like Salted Ham I have noticed that most fans are introduced to the band through friends and in the case of myself through family.
As an audience member of many musicians and artists whether that be at the gig or interacting with artists on social media, I have observed that social media is important in shaping the persona of the artist. Particularly, personas are more successful than others such as Nick Ward who regularly produces content like memes and Q&A sections creates an atmosphere that makes the audience feel comfortable. In my own experience with interacting with Nick Ward on Instagram is that he is very comfortable with reaching out to fans via Instagram direct messages and the tone of the messages is very casual and personal. Although some could say that this is because of the smaller audience, Nick Ward is proud of this persona and tries to emulate this idea as a theme in his music.
Persona
My persona for my online presence was as the presenter of the podcast. I managed this through the tone I adopted in interview and non-interview podcasts as well the way I scripted the introductions and content for the podcasts. I could also control this persona through graphic design choices, what kind of images I posted and how I interacted with users in comment sections and direct messages. As the presenter it was important that my approach to reaching out to the artists was carefully thought out especially since a lot of my audience were other young creative people and I wanted to talk about artists that were going to be a good inspiration for this audience.
Bibliography
Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1).
Murphy, S. (2020). Music marketing in the digital music industries – An autoethnographic exploration of opportunities and challenges for independent musicians. International Journal of Music Business Research, 9(1).
Schicke, J. A. (2011). An Autoenthography of Local Music Culture in Northern Colorado. Fort Collins: Colorado State University.
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