Music Taste Questionnaire

Introduction
In this blog post I am going to create an online survey to discover what makes a genre or song appealing to its audience. This will help me when I come to chose the song for my music as I will be able to make sure that my chosen song has the desired charastics. 


Making of the Questionnaire
To make and present the questionnaire I will use SurveyMonkey (www.SurveyMonkey.com). This is a free site which allow users to create their own surveys, host them on the site for users to fill in, and then analyze the results to gain detailed findings. 

I created the survey myself, and did not use one of the present designs. This allowed me to have full control over the survey. The picture to the right shows the survey in design view. To add a question you click "add question", fill in the question text, select the question type (for example - multiple choice would then need choice options added), and finally "save question". Your question is then ready to be used. 


The Questionnaire
When the questionnaire is finished, It can be presented to users in the form of a web link. Mine was viewable on: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NW2RNWS

Here are images of what my survey looks like:

Results
I can analyze the results of ym survey with the help of Survey Monkey. For some questions I can use it to create graphs or tables. In this section of my blog post I will go into detailed analysis each question of my survey. 

Question 1

"What is your gender?"

All 11 of my participants answered this question with 6 replying as male and 5 replying as female. I feel that this information could be largely due to to the fact that it asked an even number of males and females to do my survey. However, this is good as it gives me a good representation of the musical tastes of both genders.  



Question 2

"What is your age?"

My sample was largely within the age ranges of 18 to 24 with 6 participants answering so, making this the majority. The next largest was 3 in the age range of 1 to 17, and the next with 2 in the age range of 25 to 34. There was no participants any older than 35. This will effect my results are my selection was a young group, which will reflect the music tastes of a much younger age range. 


Question 3

"What is your favourite genre of music?"

• Alternative
• Indie x 3
• Indie Rock x 2
• Experimental
• Techno
• Pop
• Heavy Metal/Rock
• Trip Hop
• Deep House

I appears that with the age range that filled in my questionnaire Indie and Indie Rock was a very popular genre, with a combined 5 votes. Indie can also come under the genre of alternative which got one vote. All of the other genres were very varied so there it is hard to drawn conclusions from this. This means that I should seriously consider using a song from the genre of Indie for my music video. 

Question 4

"What do you find enjoyable about your favourite genre of music?"

• Vast and different 
• Meaningful lyrics x 3
• Plot of video
• "You never have a clue whats going on"
• Makes me want to dance
• Relaxing x 3
• Catchy Rhythm 
• Easy to play along to
• The live event
• Storyline in lyrics x 2
• Beat of music

In this question I asked my sample what is was that they enjoyed about their favourite genre of music. From this information I can gather that my sample like video that contains meaningful lyrics, relaxing style and storyline within lyrics. I will use this information to help sure than my choice song includes most of these factors. This will help to make sure that my song is appealing and likable. 

Question 5

"Who is your favourite band or solo artist?"

• Alice and Chains
• Lissie x 2
• Rush
• Todd Edwards
• The XX
• One Direction
• System of a down 
• Bring Me the Horizon
• Laura Marling
• Avicii

The results from this question were a very mixed bunch. Probably was it was a question which allowed for a very broad range of answers. However, one artist was answered twice. This was Lissie, an indie artist. I am a fan of her music and will investigate more to see if she will fit my criteria. 

Question 6

"What is your least favourite genre of music?"

• Chart music
• Pop x 4
• Folk
• Heavy Metal
• Classical x 2
• Dubstep
• Death Metal
• Screamo

The results for this proved to me that Pop was an unpopular genre with the age range that my sample was. I think Pop appeals to a young audience. Classical was also featured as being unpopular, perhaps as it is linked to a much older target audience. The rest the results were a very mixed bunched. Indie did not feature once, which I once interesting as it was the most popular genre earlier. Proving that it is an all round favourite. 


Question 7

"What do you find unenjoyable about your least favourite genre of music?"

• Musically terrible
• Lack of creative lyrics x 4
• 4 generic chords used
• Makes me cry inside
• Bad singing 
• Bad music quality 
• Shouting, not musically talented
• Boring or drone tune
• Makes me want to sleep
• Complete lack of lyrics 
• Makes me upset and angry

This questions be me a large amount of answers as my sample all gave me a few different ideas as to why they didn't like genres. It was clear that lack of creative lyrics is one that really got to my audience, with 4 people stating this. This matches with how my audience stated that they wanted creative lyrics and narrative in an earlier question. 

Conclusion
In conclusion for this blog post, I feel that I should attempt to find a song with most of these features:

• Indie genre
• Indie Rock genre
• Meaningful lyrics
• Storyline with in video or lyrics
• Maybe a song by Lissie?
• Relaxing tune 

I should make sure that my song does not contain these features:

• Pop genre
• Unmeaningful lyrics
• Bad lyrics 
• No storyline