R+P Post 14: My target audience

After looking into different target audiences, we were able to figure out who our core/primary, secondary and tertiary audiences are for our particular song choice and music video.

Core Audience
Students aged 16-25, mainly females

Due to the age of our artists in the duo (21 and 23), they will appeal to a younger audience made up of teenagers and students. This is because of their urban image, wearing brands that many students will have heard of and are likely to wear themselves. Also, the track that we are making a music video to talks about breaking free from restraints in the lyrics and so teenagers who are rebelling from life's commitments and hold-backs would be able to relate to the music. To the right is one of our friends, Emily (17), who we spoke to about our music video project and she told us that she personally really enjoys our song track and that she can relate to our video ideas.

Secondary Audience

Fans of the synthpop and electronic genre

Our song has strong instrumentals and a catchy electronic beat which would appeal to fans of the snythpop genre. Along with this, the rest of the songs on our album will be based around this genre, possible playing around with different electronic beats and some may not include lyrics. Our secondary audience could be made up of both younger and older people because snythpop appeals to all ages and originated in the 80s so is likely to have fans that have supported the genre since then. To the left is Ollie (17), he like the idea of our artists but is more compelled by the snythpop music than anything else. 

R+P Post 13: Influences and inspiration from art, fashion and culture



Ashley William's collection

UK culture plays a huge part in our influences because one of the main things we want to achieve is a real UK image for our artist. Their British, more specifically; London, roots have to be really obvious in order for us to achieve this and so one of the aspects we focused on is London Fashion Week, something which I'm personally really interested in.

Article published on the BBC website

An element of London Fashion Week that really stood out to me was what BBC called 'The Kids are alright'. An article was written about the 'kids' style, with images showing the gritty, slightly punk look. Our artist is all about being outgoing, wild and reckless and this is in part represented through her choice of clothes, as will be seen in our music video.


Therefore, to successfully present these qualities, we looked to London Fashion Week to take inspiration from the bold outfits that British kids wear.

We will take inspiration from the bright colours

R+P Post 12: Artists/bands that have influenced my ideas

We looked to other artists for inspiration in order to find the particular qualities that we want our artist to have. It is important to us that our duo represent self worth and can be a role models for people who listen to their music.

Jorja Smith is someone who oozes a sense of self love and she stands up for what she believes is right, focusing on current issues such as oppressive policing which is referenced in her song 'Blue Lights'. She is new on the UK music scene which makes her more of an influence as our duo are also new and trying to appeal to as many people as possible.

A lot of her music gets released on SoundCloud which is a platform that many students use to listen to tracks that they like and this is something we liked about her because it shows that she understands youth, which is also reflected in her music. We want our artist to have the same relatability as Jorja Smith, and as they share the same target audience, we think it would be a good idea to release their songs on SoundCloud as well and have tracks that focus on real issues.

Moreover, Jorja Smith has a good image about her. She comes across as a very down to earth girl and shows an interest in UK fashion trends, something that is important for our artist. She wears clothes such as denim jackets and crop tops, and accessorises with big hoop earrings.

Wearing a bomber jacket - reference for fashion

For the male in our duo, we looked at Professor Green as he is a British artist who has a similar look to what we want and he also releases music of the electronica genre. Along with this, he has faced hardships in her personal life such as being involved in fights, yet he still manages to rise above this and show his self worth. This is essential because we want our duo to be positive representation of youth and allow others to aspire to be like them.

This song talks about some of the issues he faces, particularly rising above the stuff that is said about him

R+P Post 11: Artist websites that have inspired and influenced my ideas

Artist websites are an essential part of marketing for the artist as they serve as the hub of information. They contain links to other platforms such as the artist's social media accounts and links to their music or store. Websites allow for cross media convergence as radio broadcasts can be accessed as well as articles that have been written.

A website I particularly liked is Wilkinson's website. He is a dj known especially for his drum and bass music and he has toured all over the world.

His website appealed to me because it is easy and simple to navigate which means that people viewing it won't feel frustrated when trying to gain quick knowledge of tour dates for example.

The bar at the top has links to all the information that a fan would want to know and these links then take you down the home page to where that certain information is.

His website uses a range of colour to draw his audience in, so despite the fact that it is a simple website, it still remains effective and interesting. His links allow you to like and tweet them so that he can gain popularity through social media which is very important as many people now have social media accounts and it's a quick way to get his music out.

I want to aim to make our artist's website similar to this one so that one can have fast access to vital information. However, to make it slightly more interactive, I would incorporate games and quizzes (as seen on Little Mix's website below), so that the fans can feel more involved with the artist. Our target audience is student aged 16-25 and so they would be interested in doing quizzes, but perhaps games would appeal to a wider audience such as a younger audience and synthpop fans.

R+P Post 10: Album covers that have inspired and influenced my ideas

Album covers are an important part of promoting the artist's image and showing something about what sort music the artist makes. The three main things that a debit album cover need to do are; show the genre; attract attention; and connote artist identity/image.

For our album cover, we wanted to have a colourful theme as our music video and artist also follow this theme of colour and vibrancy. We looked at AlunaGeorge's album covers to see what their current style is and then we looked at other artists' album covers to get our ideas for our own. I think album covers are important because they allow for the artist's image to come across the audience clearly based on what images get selected for the cover. They also allow for synergy between the artist's cover, website, social media, etc. as they will follow the same themes, colours and ideas.

Example of AlunaGeorge's album covers

Aluna and George both feature on their album covers, it isn't just Aluna (the main singer) as one might expect, so this is something we want to take ideas from and put both of our artists that make up the group on our album cover.

However, these albums covers are quite monotonous in terms of colour and don't have the eye-catching appeal that we want to incorporate in ours. We will focus more on the vibrancy of the cover and making sure that the colours are synergistic with everything else that we create.

A couple of the album covers of other artist's are; Lily Allen 'The Fear' and Kanye West 'Graduation'.

Both of these album covers are bright and eye-catching. Lily Allen's (left) shows Lily sitting on the 'A' which gives us inspiration as to how we can position our girl and boy in a unique way. Kanye West's (right) makes use of animation and random images which make the album interesting to look at. The soft purple and pink colours influence our ideas as our artist is more skewed towards a femal target audience and these are traditionally girly colours. We chose both a UK artist and an American artist to see the albums portrayed any differences in their music culture, but neither album has direct reference to their country's music scene. Lily Allen has music of the snythpop genre and so her album cover is more an influence to us as our chosen track is also synthpop/electro. The album cover is quite simple and not jammed with different images which is something we will take influence from, so that our artist can clearly be seen and all the attention is on them, although it will be a catchy album cover overall.

We've jotted some of these ideas down in a notebook that we made at the beginning of our research + planning phase.

After having researched album covers, we discovered that some of the conventional features are:

• artist name and album name
• institutional information (e.g. record label and logo)
• consistent colour scheme that is synergistic with artist's other platforms
• link to artist website and contacts
• promo sticker (e.g. parent advisory or 2 for 1 offer)
• focal image either abstract or photograph)

We will aim to include all of these conventions when performing our task which is to create a 4 pannel digipack for our album cover.

R+P Post 9: Music videos that have inspired and influenced my ideas

We looked at lots of music videos to gain inspiration for our own and one that we particularly liked, and reference a lot in our research + planning, is 'BLK & BLU' by Chase and Status.

   

This video is our main reference point as it has the same theme of narrative that we want to incorporate in our own. The hand held camera adds a gritty feel to the video and reflects the real lives of teenagers/students. We want our video to have the same indie and gritty and indie feel to it, although ours will also include performance to make it more interesting and add a new layer of meaning to it, e.g. the performance will focus on lip syncing the lyrics whilst the narrative acts it out.

           

The outfits they use in the video (seen in clip above) are something we are inspired by as they follow the current trends in youth fashion, using brands such as Dolce and Gabbana and American Apparel which are very popular. Also, the lighting used in the pub scene (seen in clip below) creates a colourful neon glow which is something we might try and experiment with as it sets up a dance atmosphere and our video will be all about colour.

           

We noticed that Sigmund Freud's theory of voyeurism can be applied to 'BLK & BLU' as the audience watches the girls getting ready in the mirror. The theory is developed by Andrew Goodwin when he states that female performers are often objectified in this light, seen in Chase and Status' video as the females are wearing clothing that could be viewed as provocative. Voyeurism could potentially be related to our music video as well as we will include shots of our protagonist getting ready, possibly using mirror shots, to portray the message that she doesn't care what people think of her and will wear what she likes.

Nicki Minaj's 'Super Bass' video is another video that inspired us, but this time it was the performance aspect that we were interested in. The artist has wild make up and hair which is something we want to give our artist as it represents her wild nature and crazy attitude to life.

Finally, we also looked at Estelle's 'American Boy' and liked the use of split screen in the studio and thought that we could use a split screen of the girl and boy in the studio for our music video.

R+P Post 8: Possible tracks for the single

The mains tracks we looked at were of the electro genre with an interesting instrumental as this was the genre we agreed on from the start. The tracks also had to be a sung by a female artist because our group is made up of girls and we wanted one of us to be the lead in our music video.

The first track we discovered is called 'What If I Go' by Mura Masa.

  

 Positives:

- synthpop genre of music (a lot of Mura Masa's songs are electro-pop)
- reaches a climax in the song which allows for us to have a climax in our music video
- singer is from the UK which matches the UK image of our artist

Negatives:

- song is repetitive
- the video is what drew us towards the song rather than the music itself
- lyrics can be hard to decipher which means it would be hard for our audience to understand directs links in our video to the lyrics

The next track we were interested in is called 'Sleepless' by Flume (ft. Jezzabell Doran)

  

Positives:

- nice beat for a montage sequence
- electro beat really stands out so the genre would be obvious to our target audience
- upbeat and feel-good

Negatives:

- lack of lyrics so couldn't do a lot of studio based performance
- repetitive, possibly not a very memorable song
- doesn't have any links to UK music culture