The promotion of a music video is infrequently used to promote the song. Visuals are incorporated as a key element of the marketing strategy, something historically attributed to the marketing of pop music videos. A star image is used to brand the product and it is this branding that the music industry snatches onto, creating a range of products for audiences across a variey of genres. Chris anderson puts forward the notion of the Long Tail Theory -
'The theory of the long tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of 'hits' at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less energy needed to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare'.
Taken from http://www.longtail.com/about.html
Anderson shows that a significant portion of Amazons sales come from obscure books that are not available in brick and mortar stores. It is a retailing concept involving a niche strategy of selling a large number of hard to find items in small quantities. The long tail theory describes a potential market, a demand curve on the graph which the internet often enables businesses to crack. An example of the long tail theory in action is Netflix as it provides a diverse range of films for online streaming, pairing the mainstream releases with obscure cult films offering a collection of 100,000 titles.
How important is the image of the artist?
The visual/star image communicates important messages to the audience as they regularly equate the look of an artist to a style of music i.e.Coowboy hat = country. According to Dyer 'a star is an image not a real person that is constructed out of a range of materials'. If an artist is to be successful they must construct an image that adheres to the pre-existing conventions within its associated genre, Websites are another opportunity to publicize and promote a star image, ofter organised into what Boyd describes as co-option.
All music websites are about the promotion and information being provided to the audience. They fall into three categories;
Promotion of single or album release
Promotion of a tour or live performance
Merchandising, posters of an artist or band, sales of T-shirts, mugs, key change etc.
Philip Kotler states marketing as;
'Human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange process'
Kotler is effectively describing the four variables of marketing.
1. Price - how much the product will cost/consumers will pay for
2. Place - how the product distributed the marketed to the target audience
3. Product - What is being sold/branded
4. Promotion
A star image is essentially what any musician relies on to become successful. An artist without a star image withe no genre will lead to either no audience or the wrong audience and the meaning of the product. To create a star image that is appropriate for the product you are selling it is important to first look at comparisons and mimic the paradigm of the genre, but at up-beat/individual aspects to show you are selling something more than the expected. Like a live television performance from the past.
What star image have you tried to create across the three products?
Alternative/Indie rock is a diverse breed, combining heavy rock, pop and indie rock with styles that are typically considered antithetical to the indie tradition, like country and folk. Alternative/Indie rock has added a rebellious/goofy attitude and an authentic feel abut it. These adopted artists are mainly presented as a group of 'mates' who play together as a a recreational thing aside of their everyday jobs. They play small gigs in places such as BarFly and make very minuscule amounts of money. However they traditionally get found at these gigs without the mass amounts of promotion that synthetic artists pay for to get a record label. This appeals to the audience as it demonstrates the organic aspect of the group and especially through the three products, as they show us as a group of individuals. However as we are targeting a youthful audience we wanted to extend the audience (in terms of all ages) to bring in the nostalgic parody look within the video and the authentic look across the digipak and website. Regardless the album cover and website we used an image taken while we were in a random street. The title 'The Walls' adheres and sums up the conventions of alternative and indie groups and represents us as middle class. Middle class referring to us living a normal life without heaps of luxury. The dirty wall and serious expressions gives the album a rebellious edge which, according to Richard Dyer's theory is going to make our album attractive to the target audience. The image of the boys is simple, but the direct eye contact with the camera and slouched postures make it an interesting image and the simplicity accentuates the fact that we are organic.
Album cover, Digipak and Website
In regard to the website the alt/indie rock genre of music tend to adhere to every average website by making it very simple with a few focal points to attract the audience. This is for several reasons; firstly organic alternative rock rejects extremely technological advanced equipment and favors the more nostalgic and old-fashioned approach to the entertainment industry with concerts and gigs in bars being their original outlet, before they were popular. Alt rock mainly centers itself around the music itself and unlike synthetic pop artists the lyrics aren't a simple throw-away, they carry more gravitas with themes of past events, fun times and people they've encountered. In addition to this, alternative/indie rock artists are relatively unknown and don't make enough to fund such projects and though it can be argued websites are a source of revenue with concert dates and merchandise being available. I would suggest that with most alt.rock artists people stumble across concerts via word of mouth. We developed a website that mimicked the websites of other artists such as Stereophonics. We adopted a very similar and simple template to them to show we don't care about being number one and generating a sufficient amount of revenue. We used the simple authentic colors black and white and a digital video backdrop of us rehearsing just to bring a sense of professionalism within it.
The music video itself is categorically less cohesive that its peers. Most alternative rock videos, had a theme/narrative to the song thus cohering with the lyrics. In my video we didn't want to follow the expected conventions and churn out yet another conveyer-belt-product, so took a different angle to production and escaped the conventions leading towards an identifiable yet different/rare music video. The filming in black and white and the incorporation of musical instruments and a past audience built an authentic/archaic image for our artist. Not only that but alt.rock/indie is the merging of rock with more indie/pop elements and the rock allowed a struggling generation to create a sense of nostalgia, reviving the attitudes of their forefathers past, a generation brought together by collaborations who despite this struggle had fewer expectations on them and more opportunity for work. Alt.rock was a way of musically lyrically expressing the significance of the normal/organic lifestyles we presented against a familiar, nostalgic backdrop. A fusion of past, present and place was a way of evoking a sense of 'reflective nostalgia of individual and collective memory' (Boym), a homage to an easier time without wishing to recreate it. We filmed in black and white as we felt this would enhance the nostalgic feel that would appeal to our intended audience as well as other audiences.
We did this in an attempt to represent us as being explorers and experimenters. We wanted to connect with the fans in all different ways possible, so the nostalgic idea was to remind them what they missed or miss so in doing so the combination of past and present was a way to connect with all different audiences, thus furthering our organic image. Therefore, across the three products we tried to create a star image of an organic act whose main concern was the music, paraphernalia and all other essentials such as audience. However being center stage wasn't our key motive of the music being all.
Where would you place the product?
Using the VALS scale we discussed and concluded which group of society we felt that our video would appeal to and manipulated it accordingly. We found that experiencers are the most fitting. Experiencers - young, enthusiastic, impulsive and rebellious. They seek variety and excitement, looking for the new and the risky, still formulating life values and patterns of behavior they quickly become enthusiastic about new possibilities but are just as quick to cool. They hold an awe for others wealth, prestige and power, they find outlets in sport, outdoor activities and being social. They spend most of their income on clothing, music, film and food. We chose experiencers as they seem very chilled and have various amounts of social connections which we believe is essential for us to become popular, by word of mouth. We don't want finances to be imperative. Our star image works well with our target audience because it brings the youth together as we are shown as being one of them and not believing in hierarchies and we want to give back to the audience rather than take from them. 'Making is connecting' says David Gauntlett. Our star image presented not only brings back older artists like Nirvana it reminds us of the start of bands who were similar to us like The Arctic Monkeys who developed from the support of their fans. The audience we are going for likes to seem not only social but very active in trying to work with our band to further improve the overall dynamics and popularity of our band. It looks more legitimate than pop music which is very popular nowadays. Given what we have established about our primary audience I think we would release our product under the Domino Record Label as it is rather small and has produced music for bands very similar to ours. Therefore we can encourage fans from a similar music background to follow our artist. We wouldn't necessarily advertise our music in magazines or tabloids unless they are dedicated to alt.rock, however this is expensive, so we would essentially hand make posters to stick around town as well as introducing crowdfunding pages such as Kickstarter to help fund gigs, albums and to buy merchandise. Kickstarter has been responsible for big bands such as Enter The Haggis and The Clinton's. These artists on crowdfunding sites are mostly organic and authentic musicians and for that same reason our artist would be well suited to the websites. We would also place an advert in music magazines such as 'Kerrang magazine', a magazine dedicated to all rock artists. It was established in 1981 by the Bauer Music Media Group who still publish it to this day. It has featured some of the biggest artists including Green Day, You Me at Six, 30 Seconds To Mars, Fall out Boy, Warwick and Rush. Kerrang only focuses on organic and authentic rock musicians from different sub-genres and for that reason our artist would be well suited to the magazine.
I think the audience would buy the digipak, or rather illegally download it as no one wants to pay if they don't have to. I don't think our music video would have an unholy amount of hits as alt/indie videos usually prides itself by having a narrative, especially if it's their debut video. Nirvana already had a fan base when they released 'In Bloom' so they wouldn't need to be worried about the views. The music video would be on YouTube as it is free and easy advertising. I am sure it wouldn't be shown on many major TV channels due to the smaller following compared to mainstream synthetic artists. The CD will also be available online on marketplaces such as Kickstarter, Pledge, Amazon and 100% our website. According to Anderson's Long Tail theory, products nowadays have longer lives than any other time in history. Where twenty to thirty years ago music stores would have to renew merchandise to keep up with the trends and latest artists. Merchandise online has no sell-by-date therefore audiences can by obscure albums from any time period. Although we are trying to collaborate and take advantage of the online age, I think that a large portion of sales would be made through record stores as our audience is traditional and may prefer to buy the album in store as our video, website and album bring back the archaisms thus leading towards a rehabilitated trend in buying CD's. I think our artist will have similar success to an artist like Oasis who start small but get relatively big, but stay the same people that they were when they started. They sold many records and became very popular and played at huge venues like Wembley, however they maintained their organic status and extended their audience every year.
An area where we can definitely advertise our album would be over the radio. The Buzz is an example who are a small alternative rock station established in 2000 and is known for playing fast up-beat alternative rock music, especially from up and coming artists like The Walls.Thus they would respect our artist and hopefully gain us more of an audience for future times.
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