Crafting Effective Music Industry Surveys

When it comes to market research in the music industry, the right survey questions can help our clients make the right decisions that can help them make good choices in their careers. Surveys have become indispensable in the music industry, offering valuable insights that shape events, from marketing strategies to artist development. Last week, I gave examples of how qualitative and quantitative collection methods can be obtained while conducting market research. Today, I want to take a step back and discuss how creating a good survey will ensure we get the best results possible.

As marketing professional Lucia Chung states, poorly crafted survey questions may result in unreliable feedback and missed opportunities to understand the customer experience correctly. How do we ensure our survey questions are formed perfectly to obtain the best results and report to our customers with the appropriate data to help them make the right decisions for their business? A good start is to avoid leading biased questions that can alter our results. We also should avoid loaded and double-barreled questions and avoid jargon so that the survey respondents can answer with clear and consistent answers.

To give you a clear example of how this could be applied in our industry, let me paint a real-life scenario of how effective survey questions could assist a client in making the correct decision. A singer-songwriter client, Niall, seeks a venue to host a record release party. Niall is trying to find what type of venue he should choose for his upcoming record-release party. He has asked me to provide him with venue options to host this event. I have two weeks to get back to him with possible alternatives and secure a venue with a talent buyer. I created a handful of survey questions that I will post on his online fan club after I filtered his fan club list by location.

For the sake of this post, I will highlight a couple of possible questions I can ask, and through this exercise, you will see what distinguishes a good survey question from a bad one. Our question objective is To understand audience preferences for concert locations.

Question 1: “Which of the following factors is most important when choosing a concert location? Please rank them from 1 (most important) to 5 (least important):

1. Proximity to your home

2. Acoustics and sound quality

3. Ticket price

4. Venue reputation and history

5. Availability of parking and transportation options

Question 2: What do you think about our concert venues?”

Look at these two questions closely: What will give us the best results so we can get back to Niall with the correct information he’s seeking? If your answer is question 1, you are right.

The first question is well-structured and clear. It focuses on the research objective to understand what factors are most important to the audience when selecting a venue. It also provides structured answers for ranking, allowing us to gather specific data on audience preferences. The second question is poorly written. First, what aspects of the venues are of interest need to be clarified. It’s an unfocused question that may result in a vague response. It doesn’t provide clear answer choices or guidance on what aspects of the venue should be considered, making the data collected less actionable.

Imagine if we returned to our client and said, “Your fans think that venue is fine?” He may come back to us and say, “Fine? What does fine mean?” Ask yourself, how does this vague response help your client? Or, you can report back to Niall and say, “We surveyed to understand the factors that our audience considers most important when choosing a concert location. Respondents were asked to rank five critical factors on a scale from 1 (most important) to 5 (least important). The results were as follows:

1. Proximity to your home emerged as a top priority, with 45% of respondents.

2. Acoustics and sound quality had 30% of respondents ranking it as 1.

3. Ticket price was rated as the most important by 15% of respondents.

4. Venue reputation and history was an essential factor by 7% of respondents.

5. Availability of parking and transportation options were rated critical by 3% of the respondents.

With this data, Niall can choose the venue based on the survey results. As 45% of respondents in the LA county area responded that the most crucial factor was proximity to their home, we could suggest that the Troubadour is a potential venue as it’s located the closest to the respondent’s residences.

Good market research questions are precious for music artists. Musicians can make intelligent choices when the results provide them with helpful answers. These answers guide musicians to understand their fans better and help them make better decisions.