Audience Consumption: Marrakesh Report (unfinished)

In 2009 the Marrakesh report was carried by Human Capital in order to find out about audience consumption.  The survey was carried out on over 1,000 people aged between 15 and 24.The results taken from the survey shows that ‘music is a vital role in the lifestyle of the youth’. Music is increasingly becoming a commodity in which young people believe they don’t have to pay for. For this age group free music is easily reached and largely guilt free, as a result the economic value of recorded music is becoming eroded and is struggling to compete against free downloads.

The first question in the report asked the interviewees, which would you rather live without for a week? Music or sex. The younger of the sample chose to live without sex, 70%, while 56% of 20-24 year olds chose sex.  More 20-24 year olds chose to be without music at 44% then 16-19 year olds. The first question is a question which grabs the audience as it is a question you don’t expect to be asked in a music survey. The question shows that music is hugely important to the younger generation as over all 61~% of the sample would rather live without sex then music for a week.

The second question asked is which of the following have you done in the last month? There were 6 options that were asked to the 1,000 person sample. The most popular was watched a music video at 75%. We carried out the same survey in class, as the Marrakesh survey was conducted in 2009, to get a better idea of how music consumption has changed in the last 3 years. We found that watched a music video was still the highest but had a staggering increase to 100%. Also another increase that was seen was played a music game on a console; this had an increase of 5% from 45% to 50%. Listened to music on your mobile phone also showed an increase from 62% to 70%. We also spotted some decreases when carrying out our own consumption survey. Brought a CD decreased to 50% from 70%, this is due to the vast increase in free downloads, and iTunes. Burnt a CD also decreased considerably to 8% from 55%, and finally brought a music download decreased from 52% to 40%. This question showed that music consumption is still present within the age group.

The third question revealed that in 2009 MP3 players were the most widely used device. However, when we carried out this question in class we discovered that the majority of our age group still use iPods/MP3 players to listen to music on a weekly basis, at 95%. Another option that also got 95% from the original 68% in 2009 was listening to music via the TV. Listening to music from a laptop had a surprising slight decrease from 80% to 75%, another decrease came from record player by 1%. Radio, CD player, and mobile phone all showed an increase, this could be due to technologic advances which have been made in recent years, such as smart phones and modern CD players.