A Quote by John Seabrook

MTV refers to its audience as 'the demo.' Being 'in the demo' means being in the demographic sweet spot that advertisers want their programming to hit, which is ideally between 18 and 24.

John Seabrook

Quote Topics

Advertisers Audience Being Between Demo Demographic Hit Ideally Means Mtv Programming Spot Sweet Want Which

Quote Author

John Seabrook
American - Journalist

It was a song I wrote for my wife as a present, never intending for it to be a Styx song. 'Babe' was a demo. The demo became the hit record, including all the background vocals, which were done by me.

Dennis DeYoung

I wasn't the kind of guy who was like 'here's my demo,' or 'listen to my demo.' I just never thought it was that good.

Dean Lewis

Luther Vandross was doing fine, but he said, "Man, I want to do my own project." So he got us all to do a demo, and that demo was "Never Too Much." It took him a year and a half to get signed, because he didn't have a gimmick. The record companies were looking for his gimmick. They said, "What's your gimmick?" He said, "I sing. That's my gimmick." Anyway, he finally got signed and the record was released, and the rest was history.

Marcus Miller

Andrew [Ridgeley] and I had demoed a couple of our songs very cheaply, and we weren't expecting any kind of record deal. We just walked around with our demo tape, trying to find someone to give us the money to demo properly. Instead of that, we got a record contract. It was just an incredibly lucky break.

George Michael

So when I was working with Amy Winehouse on "Back To Black," you know, she had all these beautiful songs, incredibly well-written and just her on an acoustic, nylon-string guitar. And she'd play them for me, and then I would kind of drum up my idea of what I thought - make a demo with what I thought the drums should be doing, the guitars - like, quite a crude demo.

Mark Ronson

I brought the music out to L.A., and the producer Tommy LaPuma heard it and he said - "Man, I love it. Let's do it. Let's record it." I said, "Okay, where's the band?" He said, "We don't have a band. We want it to sound exactly like your demo." I said, "Well, I played all the instruments on the demo." You do that when you're making demos. You got your guitar, you got your sax. He said, "Well, I want it to sound just like that, so get all your instruments out here." So I ended up playing all the instruments.

Marcus Miller

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demo-graphic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

Taylor Swift

I wouldn't say that I was ever a fan of MTV. I was a guy on MTV. I don't think I was ever in the demographic of people who watch MTV. I never really watched MTV, so I'm definitely not a fan of 'Jersey Shore' or anything.

David Giuntoli

Opinions are like demo tapes. I don't want to hear yours

Stephen Colbert

I only do numbers/acts that excite me, or I connect to personally. I never phone it in. It's about finding the balance between what my audience wants and what I want to give them. That sweet spot in the vendiagram.

Jinkx Monsoon

I remember being given a demo of the 'World Wide Web' at Peter Gabriel's studio in the early 90s, and I had zero comprehension that I was staring into the future. I was just happy with my pager and teletext on the TV.

Robert Del Naja

No matter how slick the demo is in rehearsal, when you do it in front of a live audience the probability of a flawless presentation is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, raised to the power of the amount of money involved.

Mark Gibbs

When we recorded the song I Just Can't Stop Loving You, my vocal range is a little higher than Michael's range. He had me re-sing the demo in the new key. Then doing that he filmed me singing this demo in the new key. I actually said, "What are you doing? Why are you filming this?" He said to me, "Because I want to sing it like you. You sound so great and I want to sing it just like you." I said, "Oh, great, Mike, my friends are really going to believe me when I tell them that Michael Jackson wanted to sing this song just like me." We laughed about that.

Siedah Garrett

Our mandate at Nerdist is that we only get involved with nice people around things that we love. We have the luxury of being in the demographic that we're programming for.

Chris Hardwick

With MTV in the '80s, you made your album but then you needed to use any money you made to create a video - instead of being able to use that money to pay for you and your band to live on while you wrote new songs. So MTV upped the ante of looking for one hit. Conceptual bands who didn't have a hit were going to lose.