1500 word essay.

My chosen brief is a music video, with the song The Scientist by Coldplay playing on the video. I chose this song because the lyrics have a lot of meaning behind them and because of this i could make a story to go along with the lyrics in the song.
I find that the song is quite emotional also so the video I create can be deep and meaningful. I chose Coldplay as the band always write lyrics with meanings rather than the music itself. By doing research I found out that The Scientist is one of the top 100 greatest songs, so this also helped me make my final decision, knowing that other people enjoy the song.
The message of my video is just about how time passes by so quickly and the change in generations. I'm going to make a storyline to go along with my video so that this catches the viewers attention and keeps them hooked on watching the video that I have produced.
My research included looking at the ages of people that enjoy Coldplay's music and having to research their demographics.
I learnt from working in a group last year that I prefer to work alone at my own pace so that is what i will be doing when i'm working on the music video this year. As part of a group last year i didn't get to spend as much time using the camera as i would have liked to, as i'm working by myself this year i will be able to as often as i want to.

For my research, I looked at demographics to see how old most of Coldplay's fan base is made up of. I found that most of Coldplay's fans were surprisingly aged between 12-17, whereas I thought because of looking at photo's of fans at Coldplay's events that they were mostly aged between 20-30. I then decided to see what gender listened to Coldplay the most and found that 52% of Coldplay's fans were male whereas 48% of Coldplay's fans were female. This suggests that Coldplay's fans are sort of split down the middle, as the demographics were almost 50/50. So there is really no preference to Coldplay from just mostly one gender.On Myspace, Coldplay has 444,965 fans, followed by another 293,283 fans on Facebook. Both social networks show a mixed range of all ages, as young as 15 to as old as 40.
When looking at a Coldplay fan website, i noticed that there was three songs by Coldplay that had been put up for Coldplay fans to listen to.
These three songs were:
Viva La Vida
Violet Hill
Fix You

You would think that Viva La Vida and Violet Hill, being the two latest songs produced by Coldplay, would be popular and the most listened to. However, 153,709 listeners listened to Viva La Vida, 164,028 listeners listened to Violet Hill and 420,908 listened to Fix You. Fix You being one of their older songs.
This information suggested that Coldplay's fans prefer to listen to Coldplay's previous songs/albums and that maybe the new sound that they have produced is not what they expected from the alternative rock band.

I looked at some Coldplay blogs after this so I could get more of an idea of how old most of Coldplay's fans are, what surprised me was what I had thought along was proved right by the blogs, fans seemed to be of an older and more mature age such as 20's to 30's, with little said from 12 to 17 year olds.


Looking at The Scientist, the whole video is based on Chris, the lead singer, going back in time and changing things. During this he had to learn how to lip sync the song backwards. This is not something i would want to include in my video but was definitely something that interested me and wanted to make me look in to it more.

Looking at photo's of the fans I found that they also seemed to be of a more mature age. I looked at photo's of fans in queue's waiting for Coldplay to come for signings and I also looked at the faces of people who stood amongst thousands at Coldplay concerts. From looking at these photo's most of the fans in them, appeared to be around 20 to 25.
I then decided to send out a questionnaire to people around my age seeing as the demographics suggested Coldplay fans were aged from 12 to 17. I asked ten 17 year olds, if they enjoyed Coldplay's music to which only three of them replied saying yes. I was surprised to see this seeing as the demographics said otherwise but it only supported my thoughts even more that Coldplay's fans are made up of an older age. This research helped me to realise that I will set my target audience for a more mature age group.

I looked in to the history of Coldplay's music, to find that most of their fans said they enjoyed their first album, Parachutes, over the albums that followed after this. It was suggested by some fans in certain blogs that the reason for this was that they had produced a fresh new sound at the time.
I also looked in to the history of alternative rock music and the bands that Coldplay are compared to such as U2, Travis, Keane and Radiohead. The fans that listen to bands such as u2 etc, also seem to enjoy Coldplay's music as they appear to have a similar sound and state of mind behind the lyrics they produce. U2 are a band that have been around through different generations and no matter what sort of music they produce they always seem to have a large fan base supporting their ideas and sounds. As Coldplay are compared to u2, this information suggested that Coldplay might have similar supporting fans who will also support them as much as u2's fans do so.
This research shows me that my potential listeners will also be fans of other bands such as u2 and radiohead.

Coldplay's competitors are most likely to be new, young and upcoming bands. Most new bands have their own style of music and a unique sound so this is what Coldplay will be competing against. They have recently brought out their new album Viva La Vida with a different and fresh sound. They have to make sure to produce music that fans of all ages can enjoy, so far their new album is doing well, selling 300,000 copies in the first three days it was released. By joining up with people such as Kylie for their 2009 album, this will promote Coldplay and bring them more fans. Also, as well as Coldplay fans buying their albums, Kylie Minogue fans will be too.

Coldplay's music label is EMI, they have been with them since 1999. Staying with this music label has helped Coldplay to have a growing career and very popular albums and songs amongst their fans.
Coldplay are compared to bands such as Radiohead, U2 and Travis. In a way it is good for the alternative rock band to be compared to other bands that are similar. This way they will gain fans that enjoy listening to the likes of Radiohead, U2 and Travis.

All of these bands are very similar and the sounds they produce are also very similar to each other. U2 is one of the biggest bands worldwide, they are cross generation and cross age. Not only do teenagers listen to them, teenagers parents or older siblings listen to them and remember their music in their earlier stages. By being similar to U2 and staying with EMI, Coldplay could find themselves following in U2’s footsteps and being a cross- generation, cross- age band.

I'm going to set my target audience for people aged for 16+. I think people of this age or upwards will be able to relate to the video and understand the concept of it, rather than someone that is under 16 and might not fully understand the video or be able to relate to it in some way.
Personally, i think that Coldplay's fans are at more mature ages, so by following this, hopefully i will get the reaction that their videos do.