Market Segmentation

The music industry creates, manufactures and distributes music. In order for institutions to be successful they need to make sure their target audience is sustainable and they also need to make sure that their products are catering to their audience.

The 4 bases of segmentation means that the products being created are specific and relevant to the target audience.

1. Geographic - the market according to their location. An institution, that is multi-national and global businesses, may choose to alter the product, promotion and advertising of their products to meet the needs of a specific individual target audience. For example, a recording company wouldn't presume that Bollywood film soundtracks are big sellers in Australia. Instead the product would be focused on reaching the Indian community (for example, In India, Mumbai and even some parts of the UK) 
2. Demographic - this is particularly useful in a practical sense. This means that the institution can target their products at people who will understand, relate to and be able to afford the product. For example, people who are younger won't relate to older adult issues. Also, an institution who's target audience is teenagers wouldn't make much profit if their prices were above the lower class boundary (with the assumption that the teenagers are students and that students have very low income.) Also the institutions have to consider gender differences
3. Behavioral - Institutions will divide people into different categories based on the way they respond to, use or are aware of a product. It would be pointless fort a record label to release an artist’s Christmas album in the middle of the summer as sales would be very underwhelming and it would be non-profitable. 
4. Psycho-graphic - institutions need to consider their audience's personality, lifestyle choices, opinions and attitudes. This helps focus on specific individuals within a demographic because people in the same demographic will have different opinions and beliefs.

However, in order to successfully promote a product to the target aspect more than one segment has to be considered at once. 
Age is usually a good factor to consider first because marketers are consistently starting to aim their products at the younger generations. For example, in Ireland alone RTE’s Dustin the turkey have in the past, to an extent, all had relative success in the top thirty sales charts for music over the course of the last 10 years with Dustin the Turkey being picked to represent Ireland in the 2008 Eurovision song contest. But ultimately on the Eurovision stage he was a failure. Therefore, the Geo-cluster approach was not correct for Ireland.

The Geo-cluster approach combines geographic and demographic data to create a more accurate profile of the specific market and Dustin and the Turkey had no appeal outside of Ireland. This therefore suggests that Ireland did not consider any other country or culture. 


However, pop music, which contains mostly mainstream artists, sometimes subverts from the segments as pop music caters to a mass audience across different ages, cultures and personalities. For example, artists like Beyonce are able to charge over £100 for a ticket to a concert because her record label knows how diverse her target audience is. Plus if some people can't afford the tickets there will be lots of other people that will be able to.
                                                                
Factors like the social ladder and career progression also need to be considered. Some people are pushed via the progression of a career or socially and therefore end up in the mainstream. Coincidentally, in the mainstream is where a lot of people find themselves through self-actualization (which is the realization of one's talents or potentialities, found as a drive in everyone.)  

If the institution wants to market to a general level segment of the population who listen to pop music and aren’t bothered by the type of artist then marketers can use mainstream radio to promote the product. 

A good example of mainstream radio is Capital FM. They tend to stick to playing mainstream (pop) music which is in the charts. Occasionally they also play throwback songs (which are usually songs that are mainstream that were in the charts previously.)
Plus because of high amounts of listeners they are able to play new pop artists and this means that the new artists get pushed up the charts.





Mainstream can also refer to a lifestyle. Mainstream refers to the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are shared by most people and regarded as normal or conventional.