Who Is Your Actual Audience?

Apart from the visitors to this website, who actually gets to see/ hear your music? Who would your ideal audience be?

In my case: 1-nobody essentially, maybe mother on occasion; 2-not sure

It depends on what I'm writing for.  I have two main markets right now; friends in collage, and friends recently graduated who are beginning their teaching careers.

If it's for a friend still in college, then the audience is typically university music students and faculty who attend student recitals.

If it's for a recently graduated friend, then the audience would be friends and family of the students in middle/high school music programs.

What is my ideal audience?  Probably the same as my current audience but on a much, much larger scale.

1. a lot of people, most of them elderly rich white men who only listen to tonal romantic music

2. nobody

People still have audiences?

Apart from the visitors to this website, who actually gets to see/ hear your music? Who would your ideal audience be?

1. Anybody who wants to.

2. Anybody who wants to listen.

1. I don't know

2. I don't know

3. Profit

And so, I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition.

-- Milton Babbitt, "Who Cares If You Listen" (1958)

:toothygrin:

Apart from the visitors to this website, who actually gets to see/ hear your music? Who would your ideal audience be?

1) Myself*.

2) Anyone who just wants to enjoy music**.

*OK, a few close family members as well - but nobody really likes listening to MIDI files.

**This is, without faking, triggering themselves a headache, or being downright puzzled by pseudo-intellectual babbling.

Since I do youtube videos for all my scores, I can:

1. keep track of subscribers and visitors by country.  Clearly the pope is a fan, because I don't know anyone in Italy right now, and Italy is always at the top of my view stats.

2. I can stick the videos in facebook posts, send them out to people on the ACDA list who are looking for certain types of material, and send them to my mom.  I can be sure they are getting heard by people who wouldn't necessarily take the time to look at a score otherwise.  

So, the audience is choir buddies through the years, old friends, and the occasional choir that finds me when they are looking for new material and search for SATB a cappella ocean, or something like that on youtube.  Hopefully here and there some group decides to actually try one of my pieces and then my empire grows!

World domination, here I come!

2. nobody

You don't want anyone to hear your music?

1. Not a lot of people. My family, some of my friends(the ones who will listen to something other than Hannah Montana, Beiber, One Direction and such), and oddly enough a couple of electronica musicians in Indianapolis who I don't really know but who, from afar, took a liking to me and my music. Admittedly, not many enjoy listening to Garritan's playback sounds even if they like the music. However, they'll do so regardless because I'm still young and facially unspoiled(mostly) and can make my puppy face at them.

2. Anyone and everyone who loves and wants to hear music. Audience size isn't super important but a good sized audience, even if just a local one, would be nice.

You don't want anyone to hear your music?

Indeed. Well, more accurately, I would prefer to not write music at all, but inner necessity and etc.

You don't want anyone to hear your music?

Don't worry, for once the composer and the audience agree about something.

Sorry to anyone who had been offended by my comment on Babbitt.  I meant he sucked           as a composer.  Had no idea about his orientation.

I still think it's an incredibly stupid bit of advice in the grand scheme of things (though not entirely).

Don't worry, for once the composer and the audience agree about something.

Funny thing to say about someone who is (supposedly) arguably the most widely listened to composer to ever be on the forum.

Funny thing to say about someone who is (supposedly) arguably the most widely listened to composer to ever be on the forum.

Indeed. Especially given that he doesn't seem to stand his own music.

To be fair his music is the worst thing ever composed though.

My current audience is mainly other composers at conferences, university students and faculty as well as townies that come to the concerts held and/or sponsored by the university that features my music, and anyone that hears my recordings of said concerts from my website, youtube page, soundcloud profile, reverb nation page, composers' forum profile, and facebook music page. 

My ideal audience is just an increased version of my current audience. 

Quotemining the Babbitt article is just dishonest, seriously.

His argument is actually rather interesting if you bother to actually read the entire thing.

http://www.palestrant.com/babbitt.html

Here is the entire quote:

I say all this not to present a picture of a virtuous music in a sinful world, but to point up the problems of a special music in an alien and inapposite world. And so, I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism.

And I have to say, he makes a ton of sense if you're actually serious about music that doesn't have wide acceptance. However, I still do open concerts and productions, sure, but honestly I'm not trying to "fit in" anything and that's why I even have any motivation to do open performances. Of course organizing stuff on your own, hiring musicians, etc etc, is tough work but really, if you're serious, you'll have to do it because nobody else will do it for you and then you'll just be writing music for the drawers on your desk, which is a much greater tragedy than if someone hears it live and thinks it sucks.

The drawers of my desk have enjoyed many of my works, but perhaps my biggest fan is the hard drive on my computer - it actually has my complete works at hand.