My Artist

The artist that i have chosen for my project is a good friend of ours, Thomas Boardman. He will be playing accoustic guitar and singing for us, as well as being in our performance based music video. The song we have chosen is called 'Room to Breathe' and was written by Thomas himself, but in this particular song there is the need for an extra guitar, which has been played by another friend of ours Jamie Thomas who has been known to play with Thomas from time to time. Jamie will also be in the music video along with Thomas playing backup guitar. The type of music that tom plays has a very relaxed feeling to it, mainly due to his use of accoustic guitar and his style of voice, which is similar to the likes of artist John Mayer. When we asked our artist, we asked him in a face-to-face meeting, which he happily agreed to, and also offered the help of 2 other gutiarist who could help in th eplaying of the music or the music video itself.

The Online Revolution

Music is promoted in all different kinds of ways, using the radio, television, billboards, but the biggest and most successful way of promoting music is using the Internet. A good reason for using the Internet to promote your music is the fact that its free. It costs you nothing to set up a blog and upload your music and send it round to friends, which can sometimes be the easiest way. A great example of this is the arctic monkeys, they started off by handing out CD's for free at there gigs, and then one day a fan of there uploaded all there music onto Myspace and it went like wildfire, when in an interview the members of the band were asked who set up the Myspace account but they had no idea that they even had one! after the Arctic Monkeys had got around they decided to settle for the independent record label know as Domino and have had the fastest selling record in the UK with there album 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What Im Not'. Another brilliant example of using the Internet to promote there music is Nizlopi. Nizlopi is a band made up Luke Concannon and John Parker, they came up with the 'JCB' song and it became number one just before christmas in 2005. The song was written and played by the 2 guys and then with the help of a small company 'MonkeyHub' the produced a video, with small animated drawings that went hand-in-hand with the lyrics and after sending the song round to a few of there friends, it got sent round more and more and it became a massive hit within the UK, and this cost them nothing, there a perfect example of what the Internet can do for an upcoming artist.

Branding

When it comes to branding, some artists have alot more success with promoting themselves by selling t shirts, mug, posters, lighters etc. A band i have used before, that have been very good at this are Blink 182. They have sold t shirts, badges, wristbands, hoodies and even toys. These types of items are now mainly bought off the internet, all of them can be paid for off a website and sent to you, but you can also buy them at gigs that the band are playing at. The merchandise is brought out as a means for the artist to earn more of a profit, but not all artists can do it, Blink 182 were a good examply because they had such a distinctive logo that went on everything, and its a sign that is known worldwide by most people of the younge generation, they have also been extremely successful in this aspect of the promoting themselves.

Target Audience

Here i will be showing you the target audience of 3 artists and how successful they were in achieving there target audience.

Blink 182

blink 182 are one of the worlds most successful pop punk bands. They have catchy songs and lyrics that appeal to a younger audience. There target audience was of course the younger generation and they fitted them perfectly. By the time of the 5Th album 'Enema of the State' was directed mainly at there target audience, were as the first 3 albums were done because it was there own music and they independent. After the 4Th album were they signed on to a label and they were given a target audience, this is when they started directing there music, hence why there 5Th album was so successful.


Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse is a very recent and extremely publicised artist. The reason due to her success is due to her new different sound that she has managed to introduce to the world. Her target audience varies, mainly adults prefer her sound but some of the younger generation do enjoy listening to her music. The way she has reached out to her younger generation is by having this different type of music, unfortunately she has only produced 2 albums, one in 2003 and the second in 2006.

Rihanna

Rhianna has became a massive name over the past few years in the music industry. She has produced countless amounts of number 1 records and sold millions of singles. The reason behind Rihanna's success is because her music is versatile and can be enjoyed by many different types of audience's. Her stereotypical audience is teenagers but do to her variety of songs and music style she has all captured the ears of older listeners.

Close up of the artists and Star image motifs

In music videos artist will either use themselves in there videos, with a close up of a single member or the hole band or just the artist and they will look straight at the camera. A great example of this is Chris Martin from 'Coldplay' he tends to use himself in all his videos and occasionally the band members. One of his memorbale videos is 'The Scientist', in this video he is filmed backwards, but singing the words foward, to do this he had to write and learn his song backwards which was a very daunting task, but was pulled off and he created a one off fantastic video.

One of his videos that is use's a motif with the lyrics is 'Fix You' were there is a constant reference to light and then light is shown throughout the video until he comes onto stage were there is an explosion of light.

Another artist we looked at was 'Eminem' and how contriversal his music videos are to other artists and the american goverment. He shows himself in all his videos and his lyrics always mention a certain 'Dr Drey' and references to his bad childhood with his mother.

An artist that use's a star motif, is the gorillaz for instance. In all there videos they show themselves as cartoon characters, and never as there actuall selves and during live performances, they would have the animated characters on in the background behind them.

Notions of looking

One of Goodwins theories of music videos was the notion of looking, this includes :

Screens with screens

Telescopes

Eyes

Looking glass

Indirect/direct address

Voyeurism (looking at someone for pleasure, for example the 'Moulin Rouge' video)


Pink - 'Who Knew'

Throughout this video there are notions of looking shown by the artist and the characters in the video. Pink, looks directly at the camera for small periods of time and then looks away at times. Also, as the video progress's you notice that's the characters are staring into each others eyes at certain times in the music video.






Miley Cyrus - 'Can't Be Tamed'

Miley Cyrus in this video is in a cage and there are people surrounding the cage. In normal circumstances people tent to want to see what is in a cage, and her being in it links to the notion of looking. She also looked directly at the camera at all times and it was always focused upon her. Another link to the notion of looking within her video is were peoples faces come out of the dark and it focus's on there eyes.

Goodwins 7 Theories about music videos.

Goodwin has 7 theories when it comes to watching music videos that have been applied to all artists videos and here they are:

Genre characteristics
What is the relationship between lyrics and visuals?
What is the relationship between music and visuals?
Are there close-ups of the artist and star image motifs?
Is there any reference to the notion of looking?
Are there any intertextual references?
It is based mainly on
- performance
- narrative (lyrics)
- a concept or idea