Digipak research of my genre.

 Our band's artwork style is likely to include some images of the band or at least images of the lead singer, in order to establish who is in the band and who is the main one, or maybe in the band everyone is pretty much equal. That is one of the most important things to show on our genre's digipack (indie rock).  It is also important to show band members' faces on the first album because the audience might not know how they look like, and it is also one of the main selling points of the band and of the artwork (digipak). Looking at some popular indie rock bands' artwork it is clear that they are putting pictures of at least one of the members of the band. For example "Foo Fighters"

had pictures of all of the band members blended together, which shows that the band is pretty much equal, or in "Killers" album artwork there are all band members that you can clearly see. It is also noticeable that the Killers have the same fond throughout all of their album artwork, which essentially will make their listeners associate this fond with their band. 

Looking at most of the indie-rock bands' album artwork it is clear that the indie-rock bands follow the same pattern of creating the album artwork. Almost all of the bands include pictures of at least one band member, all of them also include the name of the band, album, and song list. 

The things that I would include in our band's album artwork are some of the continuities that will be in the video, some elements of social media, and the album artwork. That way it will be clear for the audience that this album is new or old, and that this album belongs to the exact band. I would also include if possible some pictures from the shoot day and maybe extra footage (e.g photoshoots of the band, 'live' pictures).

Conclusion of social media research.

 Concluding the research that I have done on two indie-rock bands -- 'The Strokes' and 'Pixies' I have reaslised and found out that both of the accounts have  and include announcements of their upcoming tours/concerts throughout the posts, they also include the same writing style. Both of the bands are using word of mouth, making the audience be excited about something by saying that there is a concert or a tour coming up but they do not say the dates until after a few weeks after making the news of the tour or concert.

Pixies' Instagram was more audience engaging in my opinion due to the fact that they have not only announcements of upcoming events/dates that are to do with the band but they are also interacting with the audience by showing some band members in their real life. For example, they have this thing where every Monday there is a 'Magic Monday' where one of the band members is showing some interesting magic tricks. Which as well as shows a band member in a real-life but also interacts with the audience and fans. 

after doing the research I have understood that the social media accounts need to include not only bands' real life or behind the scene, but there also has to be some announcments of upcoming albums, concerts and merches. I would also take the interaction with the audience through the videos that are filmed and fully done by the band members, like in 'Pixies' Instagram page. 

Research into social media.

I have done research on Arctic Monkey's Instagram page and Twitter page of The Stroke, these are both indie-rock bands (the same genre as our band). I have done this research in order to be able to see the way in which the band is talking and connecting to its audience for the last two months. 

For the last 2 months, The Strokes were promoting their upcoming tour in 2022 summer on Twitter.

 

For the last two months Pixes were showing their life and promoting upcoming concert in 2022, and also they are celebrating how long ago their song came out on their Instagram page.

Social media within a campaign.

Nowadays social media is one of the best ways to promote anything, especially music campaigns for bands/artists. The most popular social media platforms for promotion such content on tik tok; Instagram; Facebook; Twitter; YouTube. All of the social media above apart from YouTube are the active ones, so most of the musicians can show their life and what is going on after or before the music videos and their life as a whole.  Because the band that we are making a campaign for is doing music in the Indie-rock genre they are most likely to use Instagram and Twitter accounts. It is like that because this genre is more serious than, pop genre for example, so these types of artists cannot show themselves dancing under the young babies' song. Because it will damage their star image, and they potentially might lose some of the followers and listeners.  

Social media is now one of the most common ways of marketing it is mainly due to the fact that it has a series of advantages, such as it is cheap and most importantly international; it is interactive; it also creates a personal connection with the artist for listeners/followers, and it creates prosumerism. Marketing also very nicely targets audiences directly it also constructs a tunnel/follower star image for the band/artist. Due to the facts above we have decided to create a social media for the band, as a part of the campaign. 

In order to link the band's work in social media, we will incorporate all of the life, behind the scenes, making of music videos, and all the other things.  Looking at most of the indie-rock bands' social media it is clear that most artists are trying to incorporate with their lives and the behind-the-scenes, also merchandising, if the band(artist) is big enough. 

Planning our shoot day outside of school

 Due to the fact that the part of our music video will be filmed in Guilford in numerous locations, we had to plan out what we will visit first and what last. What our root is going to be. It is important to do it before the shoot in order to not waste time on it during the test shoot.  All of the decisions were made by the whole group, however, the main part of it was done by Fred and Neave in my group. 

Step by step outline.

 In order to be able to know more detailed plan of the shoot day we had to create the step by step outline which will help us on the shoot day when everyone is most likely to be stressed and might forget something that we wanted to do on the shot day. We have all contributed to it, but the main part was done by Fred from my group. 

Henry Jenkins: theory of spreadability.

 The theory is all about the circulation of the media on the internet. As Henry Jenkins said about this theory in his book "if it does not spread it is dead", meaning that if the media product does not circulate in a way it will die out very soon. One of the main things that the media product has to have in order to be able to spread is the fact that the media product has to be online. This creates a number of advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage of this is the following things: it is fast targeted; cheaper; can be spread both internationally and nationally and most importantly it is interactive with anyone.

Henry Jenkin, alongside his colleagues, also wrote a book about the theory of spreadability and spreadability itself. 

Although the theory of spreadability is all about spreading media globally, it does not mean that this will make media viral. So the media texts will not become viral only simply because your media texts spread fast enough. 

Talking about examples, one of the examples can be Russian singer Svetlana Loboda. She, as pretty much all of the singers nowadays has a YouTube channel, Instagram

 and Facebook

 through which she is communicating to the audience and spreading her media product, eg her songs. 

However recently there was a huge viral thing that happened with Loboda. She gave birth to Till Lindemann's(Solist of the metal band Rammstein) child. She named her child Tilda, which clearly showed to every Loboda's and Till's fans that it is his baby. 

This subject matter had spread fast enough, that both Till and Svetlana had an increase of followers, and also they had numerous articles spread worldwide

but of course mainly in Russia and Germany. 

However, this example can also be the backup example of the famous quote of Henry Jenkin "if it doesn't spread, it's dead". Because this news happened in 2018 and by 2019 no one had heard of it, due to the fact that the media was not as powerful to be spread as good, as Loboda's or Till Lindemann's creation of songs and the star image.

The spreadability theory will help with our music campaign in many ways, but mainly in marketing, especially marketing social media.