Question 2 Notes

Album Cover

Our MySpace

Video

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MySpace - Our MySpace serves as a hub for all our other marketing devices. It is a platform where the audience can interact with the band and find the video and any upcoming album releases. In our myspace we strove to move away from the traditional layout which many have grown tired of. In the last year, MySpace has suffered a huge emigration to the more clean and stylish Facebook, and our MySpace emulates that by moving away from messy html coding common on myspace.

We showcase our album cover, video and merchandise on the myspace, these are the key promotional elements to maximise album sales we and provide links to make the all important money. We have all the standard institutional pug and booking information.

We introduce the band with a biography concerning their musical background, and include individual pictures of each member to ease the viewer into familiarity with the band. Our biography is less about the band and more about their musical taste and style. This shows how Tear Down The Flagship are a band about the music and not about personality, as such with more Scopophilic examples found with Pop and R&B artists, which would feature more about the artist themselves.

We also use viral marketing in the form of a competition to design a t-shirt, this involves the fans and makes them feel more included in the band and makes their fandom seem valuable to the band, which is especially important in this genre.


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Album Cover - We glean on our name for our Digipak, using the nautical theme of 'Tear Down The Flagship' and having a wave like theme throughout. We also use dark blue/green colours for our fonts and backgrounds, which ties in with both the name and the genre, which often features dark mise-en-scene. We include an inside sleeve which has promotional and live pictures and information on the band in order to help the fans become familiar with the band.

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Links between the media - In our ancillary texts we have numerous links which make the combination of the products more effective. These include the naval theme, which stems from the band name, which is a stereotypical epic band name found in the genre and is found on the album art, which is echoed in the graphics on the myspace. This also includes the band logo, in its iconic font that appears to be eroded by the crushing waves of time. As a standard font on the page, we use a clear to read white sans serif typeface, and on the advertisement for the album we use the same font used for the track information on the cover itself to indicate the link between the media forms. The album cover builds on the things found in the myspace, and there are links back to the site.


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All in all, our video, MySpace and Digipak create a marketing package centred around the debut album. A typical audience member would be most likely to stumble upon the bands MySpace first, learning about the band and their music.

If still interested the viewer will be drawn to the Music Video, which appears on the page, which will provide more for the fan, if this is appealing, they may go so far as to purchase the video on iTunes or MSN Music.

This all combines towards the main product, which is the album, and the more deluxe Digipak. In today's world, your can download whole songs at the click of a button, and such the traditional hard copy album needs to provide something more for the fans.
Our Digipak is presented in an artistic design, and includes exclusive material, such as promotional pictures and more, and also has the video included in high quality. This makes the purchase more appealing, as it gives something back to the keen fan, which in our genre, Alternative Rock, is very important.

The combination of our products is effective to an extent. Our MySpace and Album Cover are very similar indeed, whereas the Video is not quite so similar to the other products, this could be a limiting factor when considering the effectiveness of the triad of products. However, due to the Video being for the hit single from the album, it could have more in common with a single release as is common in singles. If we had had time to make a digipak for just the single, perhaps we could have strengthened the similarities between the video and the single featured. We could have also spent more time thinking of clever marketing tricks and ways to reach our audience, in addition to our viral marketing campaign.

Despite this, I think we some amount of success in creating a effective marketing package.

MySpace Analysis

Enter Shikari

Enter Shikari have a great myspace, with interactivity, songs, bonus songs, tour dates (very important since they are a very performance driven band! Their success came from early perfomances on the St. Albans hardcore scene) videos and pictures of the band and links to money making merchandise sites. They came to prominence through the internet, including myspace and youtube, in particular one of their most famous songs 'Sorry, You're Not A Winner' (http://latymermusicvideo09ben.blogspot.com/2009/06/enter-shikari.html) spread across the internet like wildfire. The overall colour scheme and layout fits their new albums theme and they are building a huge portfolio of material for its release and post release. Overall a very successful profile.

Lostprophets

A very unique MySpace, moving away from the conventions of MySpaces, which follows a trend as a huge amount of followers move to Facebook, and here they are forming a promotional teasing site for their new album and look, with a couple of tour dates and videos. It doesn't give much away and such leaves a lot to the fans imagination and creates an enigma, which creates a hype.

Slipknot

A brutal site, really captures Slipknot's truly carnage loving essence. Contains various themes tying back to the band and in common with album covers and songs, most notably their use of the 'maggots' name they attribute to their loving fans. It's use of viral marketing such as inviting fans to join the 'Outside the 9' fan club is particularly effective. They also feature a word of mouth scheme where fans are rewarded for referring.

A Fine Frenzy

A fairly simple but effective myspace which features songs, pictures, blog posts and tour dates.

How not to do it:
MC Hammer

One song, no tour dates, no blog. No nothing. This will be an example to avoid. He's obviously not in touch with his fanbase and is such losing out on one of the most potent new marketing technologies.

Album Cover Research

MUSE - Origin Of Symmetry - (Best Album EVER!)

The main image used was the winner of a competition. Entrants were given the title and the band asked people to design artwork to fit, in addition to the winners, all the artwork in the booklet artwork were the runners up, and some of these runners up featured as single covers for the songs from the album. The image itself is very striking, as it is bright orange. The only pug on the cover is a small white box in the top left corner with the album information in a black sans serif font, which shows that the album cover is less about the bands identity and more to do with the image and the intepretation of the music itself, rather than that of other genres, such as Hip-Hop and R&B where the artist takes prevelance. For Muse this could be said that is their identity, in leaving the listener to think and delve deeper into the music. The image and album title share a disjuncture, in that the image is very insymmetrical.

The back cover is a mere plain white background with the track listing and institutional information in black underneath, the back cover then only exists to inform the listener of the tracks and not provide any more imagery for the listener to think about.

The inside sleeve features the runners up of the competition, along with lyrics from the tracks. It is more a showcase of the art rather than a showcase of the band, as the lyrics only appear on some pages whereas the art is on every page.

This was Muse's second album, but there are no striking differences from the cover design of their first album, Showbiz, other than the art itself. We can't really learn much from the cover alone about the band however, and the genre cannot be defined from just the image.

4Ps

1. Summarising in your own words what the 4Ps of music marketing are. Use the following categories:

a) What band/artist related products can audiences buy?
Other than the obvious of CDs, and Deluxe Editions of CDs, there are DVDs (often Live or documentary). band merch including t-shirts, bags, outerwear, shorts, hats, shoes, the like. Posters, some artists do biographies. Digital media like mp3 albums, music videos, podcasts.

b) Where can audiences buy/listen to music/merchandise/hardware?
Audiences can buy in physical format (Disc) from music shops (e.g. HMV, the late Zavvi), online from sites (like Amazon.co.uk, Play.com), General Stores like W.H.Smith sell CDs. You can buy music in digital format from iTunes, also sites like Amazon sell MP3 albums. Merchandise can be bought at live shows (including CDs) or on the bands personal merch store, often linked to from their personal site (such as MySpace/Facebook).

c) Give 2 or 3 examples of paid-for/subscription based and free products.
Free downloads off of the bands site. Mailing lists (such as Metallica's "Metal Militia" which shows the progression from physical mailing to digital mailing).

d) List between 5 and 10 examples of creative music marketing strategies (including at least 3 internet based examples).

Slipknot - Before world tour 2008, posted videos on their websites promoting the tour in their typical stage costume telling fans to "be scared", "be warned" and "don't come to this tour". Form of reverse psychology.
Muse - New single "United States of Eurasia", put USB sticks in capital cities of the world with sections of the song in. Fans had to find the USB sticks and post the clip online so that eventually the whole song would be pieced together. Promotes them of album/song and also gets fans involved.
Architects/Elliot Minor/Your Demise - Get fans in music video. 15 seconds of fame principle. Fans feel involved with the music and the band. Band can get away with not really showing anyone in it but the fans feel like they have a personal connection to the video, song, band. Fans will tell friends about the video, good promotion.
Saosin - Send in text messages to a number, your name posted on the album artwork in the thankyous. Makes fans feel part of the production and connected to the band.
Radiohead - Album, In Rainbows. Sold online as an auction style thing. Fans pay what they want for the album (or free). Still managed to make more money than any other one of their albums, despite the unconventional release. Fans can relate to bands anti-establishment style attitude through their choice to sell independently.


2. Who is frukt uk and what is their mission statement/company ethos?
"We’re all about music and are really very fond of it. Music colours people’s everyday lives. It’s found in the mundane and the exalted. It moves us all. And it’s thriving. We help brands access the passion and the communities, the lifestyle and the artists. Music is a vast cultural space - it's flexible, it's multi-channel, it's live and digital, it unites gender, race and age and it defines the spirit of generations.

You just need to know how to use it.

That’s where we come in."

Frukt come up with marketing strategies based around music and use them for bands or products and create case studies out of them.