Know Your Target Audience

This is no exaggeration; I have had this conversation more than 100 times with artists and groups I’ve worked with: who is your target audience?

Much can be said about people not wanting to be categorized; however, like it or not that’s how things work. Categorizing helps finding a particular thing easier; check the library and see how things are set up.

Grocery stores categorize shopping aisles. Business magazines cater to different areas of business; Black Enterprise focuses on African-Americans; Entrepreneur focuses on entrepreneurs; Forbes focuses on the largest corporations in the world. While each magazine is about business, they focus on a different audience in the business community.

So who is your target audience? In my experience, many artists resist categorization not because of the implied artistic limitation, but because of the work and responsibility involved in deciding to direct their creative output. As an artist you can do your music however you like; however, making money with your music will require that you know who wants it.

Just because you rap and may be crazy with swagger doesn’t mean everyone will love your work. Jay Z, Hannah Montana and Pearl Jam have all gone platinum but let me be clear about this; only one of them got any money from me. The other two acts got their money from a different group of music lovers.

You can’t get everybody, but you can get yours! In order to get paid, know who wants what you do.

Know your target target audience!