A short YouTube advice clip by Lennon Bone explaining how artists can discover their target audience by identifying the "thing under the thing" (a concept attributed to Jeff Bartsch). The speaker uses a hard-drive metaphor to say art often represents deeper values or causes (e.g., mental health, resisting patriarchy) and recommends targeting people who resonate with those deeper themes.
Here's some thoughts for those artists out there that are trying to figure out your target audience. There's a concept that my buddy Jeff Bartsch came up with called the thing under the thing, and the way it works is that essentially this is a hard drive, but it's not actually a hard drive. This represents years worth of creative work and effort. I think your art works the same way. You may have something visually or aurally, but it's really about something deeper. You as the artist are about something deeper. Maybe you stand for things like mental health, or you're trying to stand up against the patriarchy. Whatever that thing under your thing is, think about your target audience as people that would like that.
