Independent Records Labels and Our Label of Choice

A bit about Music Videos

From this task, we were able to see that the genres which dominated music televison were mainstream music and charts, closely followed by pop music and RnB. We also looked at the role music videos play in establishing an artist and promoting them effectively, as the music video that we will be creating will be a visual representation of our artist. We found that music videos have become vital in the success of a song, as they give meanig to a song, and helps an audience to understand what it's actually about, making them easier to relate to.

Today, music videos have become nearly as important as songs themselves, and have played a key part in the success and profits many artists receive.

Documentary

We created a conclusive documentary, outlining all the research that we have found about Indie Rock songs and artists, and how this is going to affect our own Indie Rock music video.

Audience Research

To find out a bit about who are audience is and what they expect from an indie rock music video, we created a questionnaire and carried out our own focus group.

The questions in the questionnaire were as followed:

From this, we managed to find out a lot about who our target audience is and the expectations they had. We found that:

• Our target age range was around 16-18
• Our target gender was mainly female
• Typical hobbies included watchign TV, socialising, surfing the internet, reading and listening to music
• The typical amount of time spent listening to music was a couple of times a day
• Music was mainly listened to via smart phones, youtube, itunes and spotify
• The most common genres of music listened to was mainstream/charts, indie/indie rock and pop/pop-rock
• The majority of people we asked said that they regulary watched music videos
• When asked 'where do you watch them' the majority then said on TV or on youtube
• When asked to identify which ones they had heard of, the majority of people listened to or recognised around 5/8 indie rock bands
• The main aspects of indie rock bands that people liked were that indie rock bands are usually a bit different and individual as opposed to typical mainstream pop, but the music they created wasn't too heavy
• On thing which trended in peoples objections to indie rock bands was that although they are quite different to mainstream artists, they are quite similar to each other in the themes of their songs and the styles and aspects of the videos i.e. many people pointed out that there is an obvious lack of women, and when they are featured, they are often sexualised or objectified
• Some of the main aspects of an indie rock video that we found people expected include: a unique setting (something not typical e.g. a lighthouse in the Goo Goo Dolls 'Iris') instruments unless it is a purely narrative based video and a group of people (usually guys) or a couple

Focus Group:

We also created a focus group, in which we would show a small sample of our taregt audience (females aged 16-18 year olds) two indie rock music videos (Arctic Monkeys: 'Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High' and Imagine Dragons: 'Demons' then asked them to take notes on a few questions to discuss after. The questions we asked them were:

1. What did you like?
2. What didn't you like?
3. What worked well together?
4. What would you change/improve to make the video better?

Arctic Monkeys: 'Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?'

What we found out:

• Our audience liked the fact that it was a story-based video, and that there was a strong sense of realsim. They found the character easy to relate to as he was in casual clothing and acted well. There was literal representation of the lyrics in the music video, which again helped create a sense of realism.
• However, they felt that there was a lack of women, which they believed would have made the video even better.
• They thought that the literal representation of the lyrics worked well in the video, as it made sense and they could clearly see and hear what was happeneing.
• They would change the song by adding more women in to make it more equal

Imagine Dragons: 'Demons'

• The liked the mixture of performance and narrative, as it gave them a story to watch as well as being able to see the band performing.The use of narrative gave the song more meaning and allowed them to understand the lyrics a bit better. Also, the use of slow motion was found to be effective as it created emphasis on certain parts.
• The introduction to the song was on for quite a while- the audience reflected that they would have preferred a quicker start, also, they commmented that there were a few breaks in the music where the main focus was on the video, which soon got a bit boring. Again, like the Arctic Monkeys video, they felt that there was a lack of women in it, which they thought was unfair.
• They believed that the lyrics were clearly represented by the set and the themes of the video, which was effective in keeping them engaged and knowledgeable, also, they liked the focus on the main singer.
• They would change the introduction to the song, so that it was shorter and also add more women and action in the video to make it more engaging and relatable.