Questionnaire Conclusion- Album Covers

From this questionnaire, my main aim was to get a certain idea of what exactly the audience prefer in an album cover and what genre majority of the audience is attracted to. While planning my questionnaire, I used a series of tick boxes accompanied by an answer which I found quick and efficient to carry out. I also used a range of album covers to allow the audience to visualise what was meant by the question, improving on the accuracy of the answer. This was used in questions such as “ What camera angle do you prefer?” or “Which layout do you find most appealing?”. On these questions, the audience seemed to prefer the Long/ Wide shot and the ‘busy’ and compacted layout. The long/ wide shot has seemed to be used to create a more dramatic effect as it portrays realism. However, the audience also preferred the compact layout of the first album cover, with features such as the album title overlapping with the striking, patterned mise-en-scene. This seemed to surprise me as I would have assumed that a long/wide shot would have related more with a simplistic cover to signify the theme of realism.

I also asked the audience whether they would feel more attracted to an album cover that included a parental advisory and found that 14 of the people questioned answered ‘yes’. I found this quite interesting as it proved that teenagers are attracted explicit lyrics and explicit content within these songs. I also found that the ‘parental advisory’ feature was ranked 3rd from 1-4 in the ranking question. The image was ranked the most important followed by the album artist. This didn’t surprise me as the image is what grabs the attention of the buyer and draws them in to reading further about the album.

Out of interest, I questioned whether the audience would prefer the album to have a theme or just the artist to be featured. The results were very close, however, the answer ‘theme’ was mostly chosen compared to ‘only artist’ which 9 people voted for.

I also asked on the type of lighting the audience preferred and found that naturalistic and low key both shared equal votes. The audience may prefer this because it had mundane realism (more likely to refer to real life).