Music Marketing #2

     When me and my group first began with the project we had to determine which song selection to choose, we had to consider the genres of the songs along with which song we would be able to come up with a creative music video for. After evaluating our choices me and my group chose the song “Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant, because of the genre and band we decided it was best to further research four bands that are considered ‘alternative’. We based our case study on the production companies Sony Music and Domino Records and chose to look into two bands for each production company. So, for Sony Music we researched Cage the Elephant and Foo Fighters and found out in-depth about their marketing strategies, distribution methods, and their audience interaction tools and practices; along with the history of Sony Records and more of their artists. We did the same procedure for Domino Records and took an in-depth look at the artists Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, which are both signed with Domino Records.

After my partners and I finished doing the research for the bands and genre we thought it was best to begin brainstorming ideas for the music video for the song. My group members and I pitched around ideas, until someone said an idea that we all agreed would make for an interesting and fun music video. We wanted to make the video, not only a storytelling one, but also serve as a promotional video because we thought it’d be a good way to promo our ‘band’. We had to begin planning the marketing for our band and decide what the best way to present our band was. We clearly had to weigh in the technological factors of marketing today, and that became our main focus and many of our marketing techniques heavily relied on that basis. We created an Instagram page, website, and merchandise to show off our band “Ozone Layer”. On our Instagram page we posted some pictures that we believed fit the aesthetic of the band, we did this to create a visual of what we wanted from our fan base and to make our band seem more appealing.

During our brainstorming process my group decided it was best to split up the work, for time-based reasons and COVID-19 reasons, we decided half the group would focus on the marketing for the band and the other half would make the music video. So after both sides finished or almost finished their parts for the project, we finally all made a PowerPoint and put all of our information together, full of our research, music video, social media outlets, merchandise, and more things that focused on our band. We all overlooked the design of the presentation and studied all of the slides thoroughly to ensure that we all knew everything about our band, lastly we decided how to split up the slides so everyone would have equal talking time for our presentation to the class and teacher.

Overall, I learned a lot from this project and I really enjoyed the premise of it. I got to see how much marketing effects music and how successful an artist will be can heavily rest on the power of the marketing team, also being able to analyze music videos and see them in a different light than before is an interesting point of view that I am happy that I have now. Along with having to present this in front of our classmates and teacher  as an audience, I think that is a helpful experience because I believe almost whatever job I will likely have in the future, at some point I will have to pitch ideas or give information to an audience or someone of higher authority so it is important to get comfortable with that now. I think this project will help me develop my Cambridge portfolio because I can use the skills and techniques I learned from music videos, along with the marketing strategies that go along with making these videos and representing artists.