Lyrics

Below are the lyrics for the song 'Room To Breathe' that we have chosen for our music video.
(Click the image to enlarge)

Chosen Artist

For our music video, we have chosen to use 'Tom Boardman' who is a good friend of both of ours. He plays guitar and sings, with two other friends joining in sometimes to create more of a band for some of his songs. Most of the songs he plays are originals along with a few familiar covers, and the song that we have chosen to use is called 'Room To Breathe'. Tom's music is mellow, and acoustic with a feel of music from the likes of Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz and John Mayer.

The Online Revolution

 

(Above is a printscreen of the Niz Lopi website)



Nowdays, the internet is used for a phenomenal amount of things such as advertising, buying and selling products, for both business and pleasure. This is now being used more and more to the advantage of up and coming or exisiting music artists as they can reach a whole new set of fans, from around the world who normally would never get the chance to listen to their music.

 

(Above is a printscreen of the website for the JCB song)



Niz Lopi is one of the best examples of an artist that promoted and make themselves known, entirely on the internet. Using a website called 'Monkeehub' they created a video for their song 'JCB song' and then sent it round to friends via email. Friends send the song onwards and soon enough the song made it to the number one spot in the charts the week before Christmas . The 'JCB song' managed to stay in the charts for 8 weeks and having a total of 400,00+ sales, which for a song that was only passed round from computer to computer is very impressive! The 'JCB song' has it's own website which was also created on 'Monkeehub', this means that people can find out about what goes on behind the song and it is also a clever way of marketing the band. The band also have their own website which has information about tours, and you can also purchase and listen to their music.



(Clip from Mark Ronson's album advert)



Although the internet is proving very useful for new artists and bands that want to promote their music easily and for free or a small price, for already well known existing artists that having a bigger advertising budget it may be a better idea to use other ways to promote. Artists such as Taio Cruz and Mark Ronson both have television adverts on various channels to promote their new CD's, as well as bus stop posters which are more noticable to the publicbut are more expensive.

Branding

You Me At Six is a pop/punk band from Surrey, who have had a huge amount of success in the last two years. They started off as a support band and since then have become more popular, doing gigs all around the UK, including playing at festivals such as Reading and Leeds. One of the main reasons that the band grew a large following was because of the advertising that they did when playing gigs. At each venue that they played at, there woul be merchandise available such as posters, t-shirts and badges which would immediately attract the attention of potential fans. At the beginning, as they were fairly unknown, when playing as a support band flyers would be given out in the queue for people to see when they were next playing which meant that people were more aware of who they were before they saw them play. At every venue, t-shirts and posters are available to buy, and since they have become more popular it is possible to buy badges, stickers and even scarfs which are used in offers when buying their cd. This means that their fans ar more likely to buy their music because they get free band merchandise in with the music.

Artist Album Covers

I have purposely chosen to analyse album covers of artists that are in the same genre of music of the artist that we are using for our music video. This means that when we come to making our album cover, we will have better knowledge of what should be on it.

This is Jack Johnson's album cover for 'In Between Dreams'.

The three houses colours for this cover are black, white and yellow keeping it simple as the picture is black and white, with he yellow only used as a background colour making it stand out. The colour yellow could symbolise sunshine, mellowness and happiness which links with the genre of music as Jack Johnson's songs are acoustic and relaxing to listen to. The image of the tree symbolises nature and has the connotation of the outdoors. Music which you could imagine listening to in the summer, in a field which is exactly what Jack Johnson as an artist represents

Although there is not much white space on the cover, the image takes up a large amount of room, leaving the artists name to look less significant than the picture. This has the connatation of the music being more important than the artist because the image of the man (whos is meant to be Jack Johnson) is more obvious than his name and the album title.
 The album title is 'In Between Dreams' which links in with the image on the front of the cover as I think that it looks like the tree and man are on an island. This symbolises a place that people would think of as a 'dream island' and somewhere that you can go to, to get away from everything. I think that this is what Jack Johnson wants people to feel like when listening to his music, that you can get away from everything and just listen to his music to relax.

This is the album cover for Jason Mraz's debut album 'We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things'.

The house colours for this cover are simply black and white which has the immediate connotation of being very simple. The music and songs on the album are all acoustic and easy going which links with the basic cover. The picture of the man is supposedly of Jason Mraz which looks as though is has been drawn by a child and the font also looks like it has been written by a child. This suggests that the artist is not bothered what the album looks like but is more importantly interested in people listening to his music instead.

There is a large amount of white space on the cover which makes you immediately look at the bold artist name and as there is not much going on it draws you to what the music is like rather than anything else. Having a drawn picture is a simple way of having the artist on the cover, but without having a posy photograph.

This is the cover for Paolo Nutini's album 'Sunny Side Up'.

Firstly, in contrast to the two album covers above this one is cluttered and has house colours of yellow, green, red and white which automatically looks a lot more colourful and catching for the eye when amongst other albums. Paolo's music is once again acoustic, happy and relaxing which links in which the cheerful cartoon image on the front cover. The man in the centre is Paolo, with the view outside being very sunny and picturesque. This has the connotation of happiness, which links which the songs on the album and the music videos for some of his songs which are full of people dancing and 'having a laugh'.

The album title is 'Sunny Side Up' which links to the rainbow and sunshine outside on the cover, but also expresses the saying when it is used in the kitchen. The eggs on the table link to the title as it is the saying that people say when cooking eggs.

The artist's name is clearly shown at the top of the cover which is noticeable and in white, standing out from the rest of the complex cartoon on the front.

Creating A Niche

It is very important for a new artist to make sure that they have a 'niche', something about them that makes their brand identity different from any existing artists. It is obvious that if the brand identity isn't original, people will not bother to listen to the music, even if it is the complete opposite as they will assume from first impressions that the music and whole image of the artist is the same as the previous, similar one.

Amy Winehouse is one of the most famous female artists to come up with a completely different and original brand identity to any other existing artists around. With her tattoos, well known black 'bee-hive' and head-turning voice she automatically became very popular purely because of her image.

If a new artist attempted to 'copy' a well known artist, it is likely that they will not be as popular. An example of this is the singer 'Prince', who was said to have copied Michael Jackson also he did well in his prime, the singer was never as successful.

An exception of this is rock bands as there are many bands that have the same types of songs/music and are not compared nearly as much to other similar bands. I think that this may be because the rock genre is not so much based on image, but on the actual music.

It is also possible that once you have made a name for yourself, you can sell whatever music you decide to play as your fans will follow you. A good example of an artist that continues to change her music with time is Madonna.

The indie band 'Super Furry Animals' came up with the idea of having a niche in their music video for 'Golden Retriever'. The video was concept based and used intertextuality by having the band dressed as furry animals, which had a simiarity to 'The Wombles'. The idea for the vide was very simple, but yet original.

Artist's Websites

This is the website for 'The Saturdays'.
Before even getting onto the actual website for the group, an 'enter site' page shows the dates of their new album release as well as giving you te chance to buy their new single directly from the page which means that before even getting to the website you can buy the music.
The pale green background, along with the japenese type pale pink flowers at the top of the page give the homepage a very feminine feel. It is obvious that the group is girly and without listening to the music, they are clearly a pop group. Their are many videos on the website of the girls, showing them in both perforamnces and off stage which lets you see that they are down to earth and just 'normal' girls as well as being popstars.



This is the website for 'You Me At Six'.

Firstly, all of the font and typogrpahy matches with the logo for the band, which means that although there are lots of colours and images on the website, it fits together with the image of the band. The background colour of the website is brown, which also matches the album cover background.
As soon as you get onto the page, there are five small images of the each band member and underneath is an up to date 'tweet' from their twitters, which means that they have used web 2.0 and the popularity of social networking sites to show their fans what they have been doing. To the right of the page, there is also a bit which shows tweets, comments from facebook and photos from flickr. This makes the band seem in touch with their fans and very intereactive.
There is a link at the top of the page, that takes you directly to a page of their available albums to buy, so aswell as being able to watch the band's music, from videos on the homepage, but you can buy online aswell.


This is the website for 'Susan Boyle'.
The house colours for this website are mainly black, white and gold, which gives the convotations of it being classy and sophisticated. As Susan Boyle became famous for her unattractive image at first, and not her voice it shows the complete transformation as the website is almost the complete opposite as what she was seen as before.
The image of Susan is one of the main focus points of the homepage and the gold font of her name matches with the image, and has the conotation of the writing glowing, and being very radiant which she looks like in her photograph.
Like the other websites, this page also has a link to an online store which allows fans to purchase music online, making it very up to date with time and technology. However, this is the only website that has had a flag for 38 different countries, which lets you choose your chosen language and read the website in it. This shows how worldwide the artist has become.