"Musicians Guide to Social Media" Analysis

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByILRFFbTrxAVklkazc5UXU1WjQ

The musicians guide to social media is a PDF file we found, it provides useful information and advice for independent musicians on how to promote themselves through social media; such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter E.T.C. This was very useful to our group as we are hoping to create a Music Video for an unsigned band and post it to the world through YouTube. As well as this we already know that the band we are looking to promote have already tried to advertise themselves through Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and creating their own official website. So we are hoping to gain a better understanding of free promotion through social media so we can improve their advertisements on the sites they are already a part of. 

The document highlights the importance of a personal website over a page on social media. It says that it is almost a main hub for your online presence. Therefore the first thing we will look to improve and develop is their official website. However the pages on social media sites are where they can promote their website and it is more world spread with more of their target audience connecting to these social media sites.

BOCA's Social Media Now:
http://bocauk.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.facebook.com/bocauk
https://twitter.com/bocatheband

Overall this PDF file will be very useful throughout the rest of our marketing process; as it offers lots of relative information which we will need in the later stages of this project. However as my team mate Harry mentioned it doesn't stress any evidence that the information actual works in practice. Therefore may be slightly unreliable as is only based on theory and hasn't shown any examples of it working for any independent musicians.  

Branding a Band

Here is a powerpoint the whole group made by selecting an artist mentioned in our questionnaire and see how they brand themselves as a band. I chose to look at the band Biffy Clyro and found out that all their products (album, posters, music videos and photoshoots) never take away from the branding of the seriousness of the music.

Questionnaire results

Here are our results from our questionnaire. We asked 30 people between the ages of 17 and 25 as we felt that this would be our target audience age range, but we didn't specify genders because with music genres and gender, especially Indie Rock, both males and females can listen to similar things unlike film. These are our interactive pie charts to show the results for each question asked:
This first chart has shown that we are aiming at the correct audience as most of them have put one of there top three as Indie Rock, being first to Rock. Therefore we will still aim our music video at 17-25 year olds.


This second chart shows that again our target audience of 17-25 do watch music videos with the majority tied between: A few times a week and Once a week, the second highest being Everyday. This shows again we should be aiming at this audience due to the fact they are the ones watching music videos.


Here is the third chart, interestingly there were four options the last being the Artists Websites but 0 people said this option. Therefore as a clear 90% watch music videos on YouTube this is definitely one of the options we will use for our music video to be accessed.


Our next chart shows that over half the people we asked prefer watching narrative based music video; therefore this will be the main theme throughout (trying to tell a story). However because 25% said that they liked seeing the artist perform so we can also include the band performing to widen our target audience range.


This final chart shows the most popular artists from the 30 people we asked. Imagine Dragons, FooFighters, Biffy Clyro and Red Hot Chili Peppers all making the list being considered Indie Rock artists, the first two making the second highest scores (8.8%). Therefore we have chosen the correct audience and will look at how these bands brand themselves and music as well as being influenced by their music videos. We could also take a look and consider how Ed Sheeran brands himself and the music as he got the top result (11.8%).

Finally we had a question asking: Are there any music videos that stand out for you, if so how? The results from this question can't be put into a chart as it was too open but most of them said they liked music videos that were creepy as thats why the stood out. Some people said music videos that suit the song and show a narrative through it. Others liked iconic dances in a music video. An interesting comment was: Music videos that parody stereotypes, or music videos that make them laugh/cry/show emotion. Lastly music videos that show animation as well as real-time footage. Therefore we will look back at the results for this question to see what we could realistically include that suits the theme of our music video.

Questionnaire

Here is a questionnaire we made to help us establish our target audience. This then enables us to create the music video, magazine advert and digipak so that it suits our target audience and clearly gets promoted to them.

Figuring Out Genre Conventions Through the Music Video Analysis

Genre:

Heavy Rock music video conventions-

(Linkin Park- Crawling)

Performance based:

 .          Sinister

·         Gothic

·         Fits with lyrics

·         Sexual appeal of women

·         Shows the band

·         Fantasy surroundings

·         Mise-en-scene = dark, gothic, it relates to lyrics and emotions

·         Uses one main character. Only features the singer and band

·         Cross cutting

·         Editing fast pace (flying glass)#

(ACDC- Back in Black)

Performance/Concept based:

·         Simple/ one shot- 30secs before first cut

·         Features all of the band

·         Concert staging

·         Mise-en-scene = clothes more of the era rather than a social group, less sinister.

·         Fast paced cuts

·         Camera focuses on the musician soloing (e.g guitarist during guitar solo, singer during main lyrical parts)

·         Unusual angles (birds eye view, upside down)

·         No narrative

·         No women feature

·         No audience shown from concert scene

 Country music video conventions-

(Dolly Parton- 9 till 5)

Narrative based:

·         Relates to reality

·         Follows lyrical meanings

·         Follows women characters stories

·         Boss is male, shown as dominant and bad guy

·         Images of clocks

·         Women sex appeal

·         Whole narrative with song over the speech

·         Features Dolly as a character

·         Cartoon characters feature (animation amongst real life setting)

·         Turns the story of snow white into its narrative

·         Death of boss wanted (feminist video)

·         Also shows stereotypical traits of women

·         Mise-en-scene = fashion of era, dated, no fast cuts or SFX

(Rascal Flatts- Life is a Highway)

Performance based:

·         Shiny classic cars, band driving them to park

·         Links to film it was featured in (Cars)

·         Mise-en-scene = makes it look before its time (old film real)

·         Editing- cuts, screen effect (film)

·         Shows all band members on stage (in front of the actual film)

·         Shows main singer singing to camera

·         Lyrics about reality again

·         Completely separate narrative and then them singing

·         Links in cartoon characters

·         Clothes- main artist doesn’t fit with genre

·         Standing in classic cars and concert orientated

·         Song slows and romance of cartoon cars is shown at this point (features girl car as desirable)

·         Focus on guitarist through solo

·         As the song comes to an end so does the film

Rap music video conventions-

(Eminem- Stan)

Narrative based:

 Sinister, lightening outside, speech between two characters (male shown as violent).

·         Song starts 30secs in (dido part) starts as muffled, then camera moves through floor and sounds live.

·         Mise-en-scene = dark/musty green colour scheme, clothes fitting with genre

·         Rap being angry and expressive relates to narrative..

·         1.15 rap starts.

·         Storyline- guy (stan) obsessed with Eminem, makes himself look like him and has posters everywhere, writes constantly = Eminem plays himself and is singing his rap; however Stan is made to look like he is rapping.

·         Editing- fast paced cuts and 2.36 mins in stopped with depressing scene and goes to concert of Eminem.

·        Not just fan, obsession nearly in love.

Rap lyrics are narration for the story.

.    Sinister areas in the video.