R&P Post 8: Possible tracks for the single

As I have a similar taste in music to my group members it made this task a lot more convenient as I knew it was achievable to find a track that we would all enjoy.

To commence, I googled alternative and indie rock bands and most of the bands that came up were a bit too heavy and generally appealed to an older target audience as opposed to teenagers.

One of the bands that came up were Kings of Leon and I thought there style would be suitable for the conceptual video I knew my group wanted to attain. 

I thought this song was quite symbollic of the artist trying to find himself and figure out who he is. I was inspired by Tove Lo's Talking Body as I thought the use of props and style of her video could be replicated if we were to create a music video for Be Somebody.

The lyrics used in the song are also quite meaningful, such as; 'No you can't get enough', which could be referring to many things, possibly to drugs, so I was again inspired by Tove Lo's fish eye effect in her music video Stay High as this creates a disorientated atmosphere.  

The down side of this song was that we thought it was slightly too repetitive and slow and there was not enough to play with within the lyrics. 

Our next possible track was by an indie band called The Neighbourhood. 

We all really liked the symbollism of the wires which could be demonstrating how the person being referred to is going crazy and the wires are representative of his brain and the signals within.

My idea was of having a psychiatric style room in which the character is trapped, this would eb symbollic of him being trapped in his own mind, but within this room we would have him carrying out specific activities such as drawing on the walls or playing with wires. At the chorus I was thinking of having authorative characters banging on the door 'screaming let us in'.

I think my group would like our video to be slightly more conceptual and less narrative so we are unsure of this track but we really like the sound of it but are unsure of how to push this idea further.

Lastly, the final track we have been considering is by Nothing but Thieves.

We all love this track and thought the lyrics were a goldmine for ideas. We like the idea of power and technology overruling our lives so we were going to create a really conceptual video of technology coming to life and slowly taking over.

Musically this video is ideal as between each chorus the verses are shorter each time which means is great for our music video as the audience won't get bored within each chorus. There is also a lot of variety within the style of music as the tempo is constantly changing and so is the volume which would allow us to build to a climax.

R&P Post 7: Record labels of interest

A record label is a brand or trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos.

Often a recording label also..
- coordinates the production
- distributes the product
- is in charge of enforcement of copyright
- offers contracts to new/upcoming artists
- maintains contracts with existing artists


The Big Three:

These three major conglamerate record labels consist of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. They control over 70% of the world's music market which is a much greater dominance than in any other industry.
- Universal is considered the largest of the three groups, controlling 29.85% of digital album sales.
- Sony is seen as the middle of the Big Three, with an income of $6bn.
- Warner was sold in 2011 to Access Industries for $3.3bn.

Marshall Teller Records: 

Marshall Teller was founded by one individual, demonstrating how successful an independent record label has the potential to be. The music released by this record label was predominantly under the alt-rock genre, indicating that releasing music of a particular genre is a much more successful approach to generating awareness of your record label. To the right I have copied a list of all the artists under the Marshall Teller label, evidently there is a clear sense of genre throughout all these bands and artists.


Young Turks: 

Young Turks is an imprint label; An imprint is sometimes marketed as being a 'project', 'unit', or 'division' of a record label company, even though there is no legal business structure associated with the imprint. 

This essentially acts as a USP for the artists as they are known for the conceptual and unique music and artists, such as  FKA Twigs, The XX and SBTRKT. This quirky branding works in symbiosis with the marketing of the artists themselves.



Rough Trade:

Rough Trade is an independant record label based in London in 1978. They usually promote punk, indie pop, post-punk suchas, Buzzcocks, The Smiths and The Desperate Bicycles.

The Rough Trade website is very interactive and demonstrates synergey with its other platforms via the colour scheme (black and white predominantly) and by the instantly recognisable font style.

R&P Post 6: Current trends in popular music

I have investigated the current music scene from a business and commercial perspective to help support the decisions I will have to make when targeting my audience and creating my music video.

By studying the UK charts I can clearly see that pop is the dominant genre as all of the above artists/bands are pop artists. They are also all under big label names such as Universal and Atlantic-institutions which predominantly produce pop music. 

This led me to research the pop genre in more detail and I found  many articles on pop overtaking rock.

Nonetheless, rock sales remained close behind, with the aid of Royal Blood, Foo Fighters and AC/DC all featuring in the 50 albums of the year by sales. Rock music's share of singles market grew to 24.3%, its highest in four years.

BPI's outgoing head of PR, Lynne McDowell, said: "The UK has a rich and diverse cultural heritage and we can be proud of the cross-genre music royalty that we have produced down through the decades to this very day." 

From my research I have been able to conclude that rock fans tend to buy into the album or stream music, as opposed to buying the single. 

R&P Post 5: The kind of video I would like to make

I would say that music videos can often be split into three categories; performance, narrative and conceptual. I personally would like my music video to be both conceptual and performance-based as I think we will evoke more emotions from our audience and I am aware that narratives can regularly be too cliché and not work out very well.

Everybody Hurts was directed by Spike Jonez and although this video isn't as atention-capturing as I would like mine to be it helped me realise that having conceptual ideas in my video is very important to me.



After having investigated the relationship between lyrics-image-music I realised that for the rock genre in particular, a performance element was quite crucial. Foo Fighters followed common genre conventions for a rock video which contained a heavy performance element. As Andrew Goodwin suggests, the images in a music video will illustarte and amplify your choice of music and I can clearly see how the performnce aspects of their video reinforce their band's image.


The music video below was very similar to how I would like my video to be.


Zinger - Astrea (Official Videoclip) from Barefooted Knights on Vimeo.

Astrea shows the journey of two creatures in search of unity who are being helped by some sort of supernatural force that is pulling at their strings.

R&P Post 4: Audience groups of interest

As I am particulalry keen on creating an alternative rock music video, I have researched the rock genre's target audience.

From my research, I can conclude that people within the ages of 13-25 often tend to stream their music online or download it from the internet. Howver, the older generation still tend to invest in albums and CDs. The chart below indicates that alternative and rock are the two most popular genres, indicating that they ahve a large fan base. 

Chart of most popular genre.

The UK market is our predominant interest as we are based in the UK but also because the UK is the 3rd biggest music industry worldwide with over 7480 businesses in the UK music industry. 

R & P Post 3: Music genres that interest me

There are many genres that I enjoy listening to but below I have listed my top 4.

I have grown up listening to rock music as my dad was a very big inluence when I was a child and to this day I still really enjoy listening to classical rock bands like Queen and The Beatles. However, I have decided to research alternative and indie rock bands in more detail as I find the slower, more instrumental feel would be more ideal for the music video I would like to create. 

1) The 1975 are an indie band who have released many hit singles suchas Girls and Chocolate. 

Although predominantly beign described as indie rock the band are known to be influenced by diverse genres ranging from electropop to R&B.

2)  The Preatures are an Australian with a female singer. 

3) Arctic Monkeys have developed their genre over the years; from rock to alternative to indie rock. It has also been argued that there is an element of post-modern pastiche created by their experimentation of different styles used ironically.

Alex Turner, frontman.

Arctic Monkey's genre is particularly evident by their style and look. As shown above, Alex Turner has a rockabilly-inspired quiff, complimented by his pricey black leather motorcycle jacket which all work together to create this retro-futeristic posh biker look he's got going on.

When referring to their latest album, Turner says "There's like a shimmery, intergalactic, slightly cosmic element to the way the genres make me feel." This contrasts with their LP, 2006'S Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, an instant classic that mixed tough garage punk with detail-rich lyrics about small-town English nightlife.

Similarities between bands that are under alternate/indie rock...

Foo Fighters with their instruments.

Most common instruments:

- Guitar

- Bass

- Drums

- Vocals

and occassionally..

- Synthesizer

- Piano

Below I have found a track by The Kooks which is very indie and demonstrates the different instruments together to form a catchy song very well.

R & P Post 2: What does music mean to you?

Music is, and has always been, very significant in my life. I listen to it from when I wake up and am getting ready to just before I go to sleep.



This song is from my childhood as it was one of my favourite songs when I was younger. My dad would play it on repeat in the car and I rememeber singing a duet with him - particularly the 'mama mia, mama mia' bit. This song was incredibly popular when I was younger and I remember in primairy school we even did a dance to it and performed it in a theatre.


I adored this song when I went through my pop-punk phase and I even saw her perform this song live at a concert with my best friend so this song has a lot of sentimental value for me as that was one of the best experiences of my life so far. Avril Lavigne was particularly influential when I was 12/13 as she was a big role model of mine as she wasn't like the cliche pop singers who would sing about love and reveal a lot of their bodies, she was a lot more down-to-earth and relatable.



This song is very upbeat and catchy and never fails to put me in a good mood. I find the lyrics very relatable and associate many good memories with this song.

R&P Post 1: My A2 group

I will be working in a group with Amber Mota and Alistair Price and I think we all bring different strengths to the group.

My group in the edit suite at our
first meeting. 

Amber and I are particularly creative and will bring most of the ideas for production I think but we all have very similar music tastes so we should get along great. Alistair is particularly good with camera work and visualising shots so I think on the shoot day he will be really useful behind the camera and Amber and myself will know what we are looking for visually.

I plan to meet with my group at least twice a week, it is also particularly convenient that we all live near eachother so meeting before and after school will be very easy to do. 

Our facebook group chat. 

Working principles we will follow:

- Be on time

- All put in the same amount of effort