Audience Profile for the Song "Big Yellow Taxi"

Audience profiling is a way for the music industry to categorise their audiences through detailed accounts, and segment them specifically to be able to target the market better afterwards. Rather than using the mass market as one segment, they prefer to split them up, sometimes to even find niche markets and to make more money by trying to make more genres and sections successful. This is usually according to the types/trends of music, and the music industry does further research into the demographics and psychological interest of people to be able to make their marketing more direct.

Demographic segmentation includes the JICNARS scale; this is the basic market research in accordance to gender, class, race, sexuality, and so forth. This narrows down the individual sections and then gives them the ability to target specific people immediately.

For the song "Big Yellow Taxi" I imagine the levels on the JICNARS scale would probably be C1 (supervisory/clerical/junior management) and C2 (skilled manual) - I imagine that the audience for this song would be in a middle class, because I imagine that these kind of people could possibly relate to what is going on and understand the deeper meaning behind the song. Also, I feel that these kind of people can relate to the star image. I also feel that the audience could possibly be part of the B-level as they may have more time to be concerned with the environment around them. Therefore the song could easily be targeted at this niche of these kind of people.

Using the VALS (Values Attitudes and Lifesyles) profile, the music industry is able to use psychographic segmentation to figure out what their target market's lifestyle is like, what their attitudes towards things, values, beliefs, and other lifestyle choices may include. By doing this the music industry will probably have a better chance in creating advertisements, music videos, album covers, and songs which will embody what their target audience is supposed to stand for.

I imagine that several of the VAL profiles apply to the target audience for this song. One of the segments that the target audience could fit into is the "EXPERIENCERS", who are young, enthusiastic, impulsive and rebellious people. They admire other's (especially their wealth) and therefore could look up to the star. They spend a lot of their time and money on clothes, music and films. The target audience here could possibly embody what the artists stand for. Click here to get to Nanci's word cloud.

Another VAL profile that I could think of for this song and artist could be "BELIEVERS". These kind of people have strong traditional values (such as family, church, community, and their nation) which would fit in perfectly what the two artists are trying to convey and embody.

Other VALS called Teenage VALS also have charcteristics which embody the target audience for this song. These people would probably be the "Traditionalists" and "Rebels", who are both people who want things to stay the way they are and people who wish to remake the world in their own vision. Because the song and the artist are both about bohemian, eco-friendliness and indie, these would perfectly embody the audience we know.

When thinking about record companies, I feel that they should have worked with other artists that embody what the artists and their songs stand for. I imagine that RCA Records would be fitting.

RCA Records has had people such as Miley, Elvis, and Justin Timberlake signed to them. These artists are (with the exception of the new Miley) rather organic and have had their own values which they stand for. Therefore the audience of the record company could match with the one of our artists.