R+P Post 16: My Band or Artist

As a group we decided that we want to create a girl band with 4 members because we feel like there's a gap in the market for a girl band as aside from Little Mix and Fifth Harmony, we don't really hear of any other famous girl bands right now.

Identity:

Name of band: D4MES
Members: 4 
Ages: 17-19
Ethnicity: All mixed

We want to create a girl band who are relatable to the audience and who can convey certain messages that the audience will actually listen to. In order to do this we decided to give each member of the band an individual, unique character trait that is associated to that person only. The table to your left showcases this.


In order to make them even more relatable, all four of them are best friends who grew up in the same neighbourhood. They sing whenever and wherever, even in the streets and they just love doing it. It's a common passion that they all share. They got signed to Soho Records because one of the talent managers saw them performing at a gig in North London and thought they were amazing.

Inspiration:

1. MO
MO are a British trio who formed in 2012 and are signed to Polydor Records. We love their street/urban style that they have. It looks cool, hip and still relevant at the same time. We want our own band to showcase this style. They also dance a lot in their music videos and their fun, easy an quirky style is also something we want our band to mimic.











2. Fifth Harmony 

Fifth Harmony literally emulate female power whether it's through their music videos or just their identity as a whole. We want our band's identity to be of a similar style and we want to portray a strong message of female empowerment, we can do anything that we set our minds to. We want to be able to inspire other women to be strong and brave. We want to play our part in advertising the message.



3. Neon Jungle 


Again, in terms of identity, Neon Jungle are an ethnically diverse group who work really well together. They're image is again quite street/urban but they can also pull off the classy look as shown by some of the pictures. We want our band to be quite ethnically diverse to break any racial stereotypes that may be prevalent in the music industry.



4. The Spice Girls 

This inspiration is also more for identity. Even though The Spice Girls were a five-piece band, each individual band member had a unique personality trait. There was the posh spice, the scary spice, the sporty spice, the baby spice and the ginger spice. This made the band a lot more relatable to the audience as they could choose the person who they had most in common with. Similarly, we want to have unique personality traits within our band as well.

R+P Post 15: My Record Label

We have decided to call our record label Soho Records.






About Soho Records:

• We are a subsidiary of Universal Music Group (UMG) and are based predominantly in Soho, London and we sign new, fresh talent from Britain.
• We aim to seek out new and talented musicians and turn them into artists who have a solid brand identity and we aim to mould them and help them become the best versions of themselves.
• We cover mainly the pop, R&B and EDM genres right now but if we find talent that branches out from these genres then we are willing to work with them.
• We create a friendly and relaxed atmosphere for out artist's to work in and essentially we are like one big family right now.
• We are quite a small record label, only signing artists who we believe have what it takes to make it in the music industry.

R+P Post 14: My Target Audience

Our target audience is:

1. Skewed mainly towards females

We want our band to promote female empowerment. We want to influence women to be strong and proud of who they are, therefore, naturally our content will be aimed more towards the female gender. Right now, there are many strong female artists out there like Beyonce, Rihanna, Taylor Swift and so on who have huge fan bases who look up to them and inspire to be like them.

In a recent study released by Forbes where they investigated the most powerful musicians of 2014, six out of the ten were women, with Beyonce coming out on top and earning her career best of $115million in a year due to the 95 sell out shows of her world tour.










2. Fans of Pop and R&B

This is the main type of music that we wish to produce so it makes sense that fans of pop and R&B are our secondary target audience. Pop and R&B are two massive genres as I found out during my research into current trends in the music industry, therefore it shouldn't be too hard to build a fanbase around that as quite a lot of people do listen to those genres of music.






3. Skewed towards the younger generation

Although our band could appeal to all ages, I would say that our band would be more appealing to the younger audience as they can relate more to the band. They understand what we mean and our message would be clearer to them.

R+P Post 13: Influences and Inspiration from Art, Fashion and Culture

Fashion

I really like the whole street/urban fashion trend that is considered really trendy right now.

                

These styles a representative of someone's personality and it's really hip and modern. Many people have now started to follow this trend even though it started off as something that was initially received with criticism from the older generation. This style is more attributed to the younger generation as it's a fairly new trend.

Many bands/artists and celebrtities have also been wearing clothes that are associated with this trend such as Rihanna, MO and Kourtney Kardashian.

           

I would like my band/artist to wear similar clothes to this as I feel it is really modern and trendy right now. It's also quite an eye-catching, attention grabbing look.

Post-Modernism

'Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism.'

Above is the definition of post-modernism. This idea of not accepting everything at face value and being sceptical about realism really intrigued me. I researched more into this movement and was really intrigued and fascinated by it. 

I therefore want to make my music video challenge something that is considered socially acceptable. I want people to think about what is considered 'okay' in our society. 

R+P Post 12: Artists/Bands that have Influenced my Ideas

Neon Jungle

Neon Jungle are a British four-piece girl band consisting of Shereen Cutkelvin, Amira McCarthy, Jess Plummer, and Asami Zdrenka. I love the way these four girls look together as a band. They all have their individual personalities within the group but they come together and work. They all have strong female personalities and their music can be described as pop with a bit of rock/dance. They inspired me to want to make a band's music video because even though they're a group, they're individuality is still a prominent feature in their band. I also love their style! The outfits they wear are quite daring but they look confident wearing it and this may encourage their audience to embrace themselves for who they are and not to be scared to be different. This is a very powerful message to portray. 

I love not only their style but the experimental nature of their music videos. They're usually always really quirky and experimental. For example, in their song Braveheart, they experimented a lot with lighting and space and in Louder they experiment with backdrops, smoke, editing, camera movements and they also play instruments in the music video.  

Fifth Harmony

Fifth Harmony is an American girl group formed on the second season of the The X Factor USA in July 2012. The group consists of members Ally Brooke Hernandez, Normani Hamilton, Dinah Jane Hansen, Camila Cabello, and Lauren Jauregui.

The reason I find this girl group inspirational is because they are all for female empowerment. They send the message that women are not just pretty faces and they work to break the common stereotype of women in music videos. This can be seen in their songs Worth It and Boss. Similar to Neon Jungle, they also have their own individual personalities and styles shine through even if they are in a group together. My idea of using guys as props in our music video comes from these guys and the message they send. 


Beyonce

 

When you think of Beyonce you immediately think of strength and power. She literally emanates power from herself through her music, her performances and just her personality. She has also allowed her fans to watch her go through different stages of life and experience this along with her. I want my artist/band to build a strong and powerful image and I want people to look up to them in the long term,

R+P Post 11: Artist Websites that have Inspired and Influenced my Ideas

I researched a few artist websites and the main features that were common across all of them were:

• Lots of opportunities to purchase things; albums, merch, tracks etc
• Very interactive
• Synergistic with all other online marketing
• All social media links are provided
• They always have a store/merch page
• They always have a drop down menu with all other sub-pages listed below.

The first website I was inspired by was One Direction's:

When you enter their website the first page is a promotional page selling their new album. This covers the whole page and then on the right is a little button that says 'ENTER WESBITE'

Once you click on 'enter website' you are redirected to the home page where immediately there is a massive picture of the band. And then you scroll down and there are opportunities to buy things, news, music etc. Everything is big and easily accessible and it's a simple website to use. I would like to make my website like this and include all the interactive opportunities that 1D's website also includes.

This is the bands drop down menu, again everything is in large scale. When you scroll on top of each menu the fonts change. Again, it's very simplistic, easy on the eye and at the same time still appealing. 

They also have a merch page. It opens up in a completely different page and is a webpage dedicated solely for the merch. Once again, the style is simple yet effective and everything is easily accessible. A feature which I find appealing and would like to use in my own website. 

This is their tour page, again very simple, big and easy to use. 

This is their social media and record label thing that they have at the bottom of every single page. It's synergistic and allows the audience to easily access everything else.

This is Fifth Harmony's website. I really liked their 'bio' page where they have a picture of each individual girl in the band and then a short description of that girl. Maybe in my one I could have a section just talking about my artist. I also like the different coloured backdrops. 

R+P Post 10: Album Covers that have Inspired and Influenced my Ideas

I have researched a number of different album covers and there are quite a few that I found really interesting and appealing. 

I liked the theoretical ones the most, the ones that have a deeper meaning than the first time you look at it. I also find the ones that don't feature the artist on it appealing because it makes you think deeper as to why they might have done that. Since this project is about a debut artist, not having their image on the album cover may not be ideal but its an idea that I find really interesting. 

I then anaylsed one album cover in more detail: The Foals - 'Holy Fire'

I also briefly analysed Ed Sheeran's 'Multiply' album cover: 

R+P Post 9: Music Videos That Have Inspired and Influenced my Ideas

During my research for this project, I have come across a lot of music videos that I like the look of and would love to create something as good as that.

One music video in particular was really inspirational for me and the song is called, Don't Be So Hard On Yourself by Jess Glynne. The music video had both narrative and performance bits and the lyrics were interpreted literally into the music video. It was a very emotional music video and it takes the audience through a journey which is something I would like to achieve in my own music video. I want to convey a deeper message than just the song itself.

I decided to break down the video even more and did a semiotic analysis on it which I have included below:

Another music video that has influenced my ideas is Do It Again by Pia Mia. Her music video is purely performance based but with all the fast paced editing and the changing colours, it looks really good. The camera movement as well and all the slo-mo shots also look really good. I would love to recreate some of the slow motion shots in my own video. Something else I would love to recreate is the way in the music video they edit to the beat of the music. Her dance moves as well are really good and the performance shots are filmed in a way which makes them exciting to watch.

Another video that I took influence from in terms of lighting is Braveheart by Neon Jungle. I love the way the lighting changes throughout. I want to do this in my music video as well and play around with silhouettes and different coloured lighting. The camera movement and the different levels and positioning of the band and the way they walk up to the camera as well looks super cool. 

R+P Post 8: Possible Tracks for the Single

After considering a long list of possible tracks, I have managed to whittle the long list down to three tracks that I feel would be ideal to create a music video for. 

1. Confident - Demi Lovato

I really liked this song because even though it has a good rhythm, the lyrics convey a deeper message. The artist, Demi Lovato, has been through a lot of online bullying through people body shaming her and commenting negative things about her appearance. This song is almost her reply to those haters and letting them know that regardless of what they think, she's confident. Below I have made a table highlighting the pros and cons of potentially choosing this song: 

2. Locked Away - R.City ft. Adam Levine

The main reason why I would like to do this song is because of how catchy it is. The first time I heard this song, I was in the car with my mum and as soon as it came on I was dancing along to it and went on my phone straight away to find out what it was called and who was involved in it. I feel like if we did this song, it would be a lot easier to attract the audiences' attention because of the beat and the fusion of pop and reggae. It's different to the usual chart music that you get. Below I have made a table highlighting the pros and cons of potentially choosing this song:

3. Red Planet - Little Mix 

This song also has quite a catchy beat and rhythm. It is also a band song so everyone in our group can be involved in the video. We can interpret the lyrics as passion and love as the connotations of red are consistent throughout. We can also use this song to break the stereotypical representation of women in music videos and be strong and powerful. Below I have made a table highlighting the pros and cons of potentially choosing this song: 

R+P Post 7: Record Labels of Interest

There are many roles that a record label must play in order to successfully sell both music and the artist. Below I have listed some of the main ones in the form of a spider diagram:

The music industry is split into two main types of record labels. One is the big name labels who dominate the market and the other is the independent record labels who don't have as much market share but are rapidly growing due to advances in technology and free platforms such as YouTube.






First we have the three biggest record labels, which are; Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. These three record labels dominate the market and control around 70% of the world's music industry.




As well as the big dominant record labels there are also independent, smaller ones that also work to produce and sell music. Some examples of  British independent record labels include; 3 Beat Records, PMR Records and National Anthem.

PMR Records

This is what was written in the about section of their website. They have signed some pretty popular artist's such as Disclosure and Jessie Ware. The brothers started up this record label to find fresh talent with unique styles and have been pretty successful in doing so.










Below is a recent article from The Guardian talking about how PMR Records are redefining pop music:
























Overall, from all the research into record labels that I have conducted,  I would like my artist to be signed to a record label who embrace new and upcoming artists and help them find their image and also help them find their sound in terms of their music as well.