Audience Analysis

A medium’s audience can be categorized as implicit or explicit.  The explicit audience are those who can be determined by advertising. The implicit audience are those who are addressed by the web’s content.

Pitchfork’s Implicit Audience.  In Pitchfork’s “Forkast” article on the new Belle & Sebastian song, “Perfection as a Hipster,” the author opines: “If the defining characteristic of a hipster is knowing not to admit you are one, then Belle & Sebastian's latest project is going to cause some uncomfortable squirming, at least among those whose vintage t-shirts permit such freedom of movement.” And then closes, “But it's worth hearing if only to be a more perfect, ahem, you.”  Clearly, Pitchfork thinks of most of its audience as hipsters.  The verbose language and obscure reference of reviews also shows that Pitchfork thinks its audience is capable of “getting” most of its content.  This category of person will be called “learned music connoisseurs.”

Pitchfork’s Explicit Audience.  Pitchfork courts mostly three categories of advertiser:  hipster clothing store American Apparel, record companies, and it’s video channel Pitchfork.tv.  This stratification of audience is more ambiguous, but let us say the category of person are music fans, hipsters, sartorialists.