Friday 25 September 2009

Creating Your Music Artist...

  • Name of band: The Disadvantaged
  • Genre: Indie pop/rock

  • Brief description: In the band, there are 5 members. 2 of the members are boys and the other 3 are girls. All of the members were born in Britain. All members are aged between 17-19 years old.

  • Biography: Where are they from? All were born in Britain, all members have grown up in the south east London area.
  • History of the band? The band met at the secondary school they attended in south east London. They all had experience of playing instruments and put their band together when they were 14 and 16. Started practising and writing songs together and having practise sessions of their music. All took up Saturday jobs and saved up the money to hire out studios in order to record their demos. Set up their own Myspace page and put their songs onto this page. Put up advertisements on similar bands music pages so that fans of those bands would go and listen to their music and their fanbase would start to grow.

  • Musical Influences: La Roux, Florence + The Machine, The Killers, MGMT.

  • Accomplishements so far: Debut single got into the Top 10 of the UK singles charts. Supported Fall Out Boy on the UK leg of their world tour at the beginning of 2009, performed at music festivals over the summer including V Festival, Reading & Leeds and Glastonbury.

  • Up and coming tour/gig dates: Supporting Enter Shikari on their upcoming tour. Also set to perform for fans at the HMV store in Oxford Street to launch their new album.

  • Press Coverage to date: Interviews with Radio 1, NME magazine, Kerrang magazine and featured in the new artists sections of a number of music websites.
  • Artists Image:
  • Where you propose to push the artists image: Have an 'unstyled look', something that doesn't look as if its been styled by a stylist, something that looks as if they've styled themselves. Clothes you would see typical teenagers wearing, indie style clothes.
  • How you will create a band identity: Identity will be quite a unique one. If people were to look at them for their image, compared to other bands of a similar genre, they would be easily recognised by people of their own age and possibly a few years older due to their style being things that everyday teenagers would wear. This will help people relate to them and possibly help them create a large fan base among teenagers who are around their age.

  • What sites will you use and what style?: The main website the band will use is their own Myspace web page. This page will have the full versions of all their songs and will give fans the opportunity to listen to their music and download the songs they like for free. Will also have full information about each member of the band and the band as a whole to let their fans and people who are new to their music get to know them. The band will also have their own official website on their label, Warner Bros. Records.

  • Other internet plans: Will be featured in the new artist sections of music websites such as NME.com, Kerrang.com.
  • Other gimmicks and PR stunts: appearances at Kerrang Awards, interviews on Kerrang Radio and Radio 1, live sessions for MTV music channel, and will release a podcast for free on iTunes which will include interviews and exclusive acoustic versions of their songs.
  • Alliances Already Forged: Formed an alliance with Enter Shikari when they both performed at a music festival over the summer, which lead to them being asked to support them on their upcoming UK tour.
  • The Target Audience: The bands main target audience will be people in their late teens and people in their twenties, due to the different sound that the band provide and their fresh and original image.

Saturday 19 September 2009

Ideas for my music video...

One of my favourite music videos has to be Foundations by Kate Nash. When I first saw it I thought it was great, the whole thing was so original and was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I love the way theres a mix of the singer and the actor, as well as scenes which use only objects which have been filmed in a way that makes them look as if they're moving around the scene on their own. I also really like the way that the whole video has bright colours throughout it, and all of the objects used in the video go really well with the theme of the song and the meaning of the lyrics. The way that the video has been filmed using objects which represent the male and female present in the video really fits in well with the meaning of the song, talking of how a strong relationship was now ending as the people involved could no longer live with each other, despite them both trying to carry on as usual.




I would really like to do a video that involves moving objects, and would like to do it in the same way that it was done in this Kate Nash video. I'm also thinking of using polaroid photographs and other random shots of things that go along with the song that I will choose. At the moment, I'm not planning on using any actors in my video, and will instead use random objects to represent the meaning of the lyrics of the song.

New Music Act Stuff...

Solo artist or group?: Group, mix of boy & girl members

Name: Not yet sure about what the bands going to be called...need to do a bit more thinking to think of something original and that will stand out, and that doesn't sound like any artist name thats around at the moment...I have come up with the idea of calling my music act The Disadvantaged. I have chosen this name because I think it goes well with the bands image and sound. I also think it would be something memorable and people of a similar age who listen to their music could maybe relate to the bands name.


Back story: Band made up of 5 members, 3 girls and 2 boys. All met at secondary school, and set up their band through being in the same music class and joining their school music club. All had Saturday jobs and saved up their money to hire out a recording studio to record their songs, which they then uploaded onto their own Myspace page. They put their songs up for free download and advertised themselves on similar bands Myspace pages in order to attract a wider audience. This increase in popularity led to them being signed by an independent label.

Ideology: Values are to make music that doesn't sound like anything else that is in todays charts. They want their music to be completely different from other bands that are around today, and want to bring an original sound to todays music charts. They write their own songs and play their own instruments, and their songs all have lyrics which refer to experiences members of the band themselves have experienced.

Image: The members of the band all have an indie rock type style, though the type of clothes they wear are quite ordinary and what you would expect to see everyday people wearing as they don't have the 'perfect' record label styled look, which is something they pride themselves of never having. No one in particular has styled them, instead they have styled themselves to fit in with their unique sound.

Record Label: Signed by independent label, Echo Label, which sign various bands that have a unique and different sound. Bat for Lashes, another group bringing their own unique sound to todays charts, are also signed to this label. The band would rather be signed to an independent label than one of the majors, due to the fact they want to have their own say in the music they make and the image they have. They don't want to be changed or styled in a particular way which would make them like every other act, which a major label may do. They also thought it would be better to sign to an indepedent label, as they have seen from other music artists that when particular artists have been signed to a major label after a while it becomes all about making money and not about the quality of music that is made.