Music Marketing Reflection

This project began with me and my group getting assigned "rock" as our respective genre. At first, we were perplexed as rock is not a genre my group was familiar with and we were still determining what course to take when figuring out the brand and styling behind the new artist we were assigned to craft. 

Knowing we had to figure out branding, we began researching and developing case studies about rock bands under two extremely well-known music distribution companies, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. While researching, we saw how rock bands were generally marketed and how their music was distributed. Researching well-known rock bands assisted in how we would create our own.

Therefore, we decided we wanted our new band to follow the grunge, rebellious aesthetic many rock bands utilize to create their brand. We wanted our music video to showcase notions of feeling carefree, rebellious, and youthful while remaining dark and grunge. After figuring out the locations we would use to film the music video, we designed our storyboard. We wanted the frames to match the sounds depicted in the music itself. As a result, we wanted the scenes during the pre-chorus to be slower while the scenes during the chorus would be fast-paced and inclusive of numerous jump cuts. When filming, we made sure we took numerous shots to be able to incorporate the fast-paced editing we wanted to do. 

Once we filmed and edited our music video, we had a much better idea on how to represent our rock band with branding and marketing. We coined the name "After Hours" for our band as we thought the aesthetic would be popular among our target audience, especially when it comes to the age we were going for (16-22 years old). From there, we were able to find out brand colors (white, gray, black, and red) and create a logo that symbolized the band. Taking advantage of concepts like technological convergence, we decided that the most effective way to market our artist would be to distribute their music digitally on streaming platforms and make their music available for purchase digitally. However, we also thought it would be innovative to sell their music digitally on vinyl and such; digital distribution is still the main form.

Overall, this project was the one I learned the most from. I got a real understanding of the type of work a large-scale project requires and how to take on the tasks it demands. Large projects have always intimidated me, but this made me more confident on how to tackle them. I believe this will be especially helpful when I begin developing my Cambridge portfolio.