Similar Artist Research - Bombay Bicycle Club

Bombay Bicycle Club are an indie rock band from Crouch End, London. It is useful knowing this exact area because we can now do research into their background and how successful they actually have been in coming from such an area. It is composed of 4 members, Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl, Suren De Saram and Ed Nash.

In an interview with ContactMusic, a site which interviews and reviews different musicians, the band said they were influenced by many 1990's american bands including Pavement and Sonic Youth. This is useful information as we can further research into these artists and see what type of style they have allowing us to gain more information.

I have read over the whole interview which ContactMusic carried out with Bombay Bicycle Club and some of the information is useful, as we can use it to inform decisions we will make on our project. The link for the interview is here: http://www.contactmusic.com/interview/bombay-bicycle-clubx03x08x09

In terms of how the band fashion themselves, they also draw a lot of their style influences from the 90's. A piece on the band as a whole and their style and then each member's individual style was carried out by Fashion Beans, a website which focuses on the fashion on celebrities etc. This article can be viewed here and is well worth the read as it gives details on individual pieces of fashion for each artist and allows us to tailor certain aspects minutely to our final artist.

http://www.fashionbeans.com/2010/bombay-bicycle-club-style-steal/


Their Albums:

I had the blues but I shook them loose:

I absolutely love this cover because of the vintage image in the background. These vintage or atleast vintage looking images are becoming ever popular now especially with stores like Urban Outfitters, who use many of these images in their products and to influence the styling of their shop. The simplicity of the text and the stark contrast between the black and white image and the blue of the text is also very well done as it catches the eye of audience. It's not over professional but looks like an album that one would want to buy. This cover doesn't give much away about the band, therefore intriguing a possible audience. I think it would be useful for us to draw influence on this album, because of its simplistic yet attention grabbing nature and adeptness to todays market.

Flaws:

This album cover I'm not as fussed on. While again I fee it has that edge which is becoming popular in the market today, for me, I think its quite boring and not eye catching enough. The simplicity and dark colours I feel aren't appealing for a young audience and thus this isn't something I think I would like to apply to our piece. I do however like the text that is applied for the titles. I think this simple, vintage style font is really good looking when applied to an album and would be one which would be worthwhile considering. I think however, the font used needs to be informed by the music and therefore, if for example we used quite a loud song this wouldn't be suitable. Therefore, this has highlighted to me the need to consider all aspects including music and artist when designing small parts of the album, including font.

A different kind of fix:

Again, I really like this album cover and the colours, the natural colours used. I love the fact that the same titling for Bombay Bicycle Club from the first album has been applied again here. I love the colours and the font and their simplistic style and how they don't give away much about the contents of the album. The abstract nature of the 2 faces and colours and pattersn within are a useful tool by enticing possible audience to check out the album. All of these methods we could apply to our artist and would be worthwhile for us to consider.







Website:

Again, as before with the previous 2 artists, Bombay Bicycle Club implement the same style within their website. It is very simple, with neutral colours implemented and not complicated or distracting for a viewer of the website. As this is pretty much the same as the other websites, I don't think its necessary to go into much evaluation, however it confirms that in terms of our website design, we might be better to go with a simpler design.

Demographic:
I used music analytics website, beluga.grooveshark, to gain an insight into how their fans are distributed and it is as below:

This is useful because it shows us what group of people we need to target mostly, but also how the current methods Bombay Bicycle Club adapt, are not targeting other demographics. Thus showing that if we want to target a higher demographic, that we might need to think of new methods for marketing and styling. However, I always thought we were  going to target a younger female/male demographic and therefore this is simply helpful in showing us that this genre is popular amongst this demographic and the styling, sound and marketing of Bombay Bicycle Club is successful for this age range confirming that it would be worthwhile for us to considering implementing some of their techniques.

Similar Artist Research Marina and the Diamonds

Marina Lambrini Diamandis, or Marina and the Diamonds, is a 28 year old Greek-Welsh singer and songwriter. She first discovered her talent in secondary school and eventually went on to to study at a dance school in London. Here she auditioned for many different things including musicals, with eventually being signed by a

record label. 

Marina Lambrini Diamands, or Marina and the Diamonds, is a 28 year old Greek-Welsh singer and songwriter. She first discovered her talent in secondary school and eventually went on to to study at a dance school in London. Here she auditioned for many different things including musicals, with eventually being signed by a record label. 

Critics have characterized her as a DIY musician, and described her music as an alternative to mainstream pop music. She is often catalogued as a new wave pop artist. She herself stated that she was an 'indie artist with pop goals.' 

She has said she has been influenced by a wide range of musicians, including PJ Harvey and Britney Spears. This is useful for us to keep in mind, again in terms of styling our artist. She herself has said that Daniel Johnston was one of the most influential people for her. I think it would be worth while for us to look into him a bit deeper, especially when we take what she said about him into account:

He really opened me up to a whole new world of music and a whole new perception of what an artist is. For me, he really encouraged me because if you think of someone who has been spoon-fed pop, up until twenty-one years old, and you hear someone like Daniel Johnston you're like "God, this is terrible, but I love it." It sounds like a child has made it, like, the production is so all over the place. He's obviously got something very captivating here yet he doesn't fit the normal mould and people still love him. I thought "if he can do it then [so can I]," that's when I started to produce things myself and play live, even though I wasn't even great on the piano. It's all about emotion and if you have heart, people connect to that.

As well be noted for her music, she is also noted for her attire. She described her own attire in three words - Vintage, Cheerleader and Cartoon. She also has drawn her style inspiration from other celebrities including Gwen Stefani. Some influential designers for her include: Beyond Retro, Laura Mackness. This is useful for us as we can research these designers and discover a bit more about their style and apply it to our final product. 

New Wave

New wave music is an umbrella term for several late-1970s to mid-1980s pop/rock styles, with ties to 1970s punk rock. Initially – as with the later post-punk – new wave was broadly analogous to punk rock, before branching as a distinctly identified genre, incorporatingelectronic/experimental music, mod, disco and pop. It subsequently engendered subgenres and fusions, including new romantic and goth rock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_wave_music

Daniel Johnston

Daniel Johnson is an American Singer Songwriter.  His work gained notoriety when he moved to Austin Texas.  From there is career grew with him gaining a place on a then MTV show for new artists
and with well known artists such as Kurt Kobain endorsing his products. (Kurt Kobain was spotted wearing a top with Johnston's album cover on the front. His music style was described as spotty but brilliant. There was a film made about his music career called The Devil and Daniel Johnston. It documented his life from childhood until present, with emphasis on his experience with bipolar disorder and how it manifested itself in demonic self-obssession.

By looking at the albums which Marina and the diamonds has produced, we can apply our findings to our production by taking certain methods she has applied. To date, she has produced 2 albums; The Family Jewels and Electra Heart.


I like this style of cover, with a more detailed background and very simple text and pose from Marina and The Diamonds, I like how the text looks like it has been written on as it gives it a more original quality. The colours that are used I feel are quite traditional to the indie pop genre. I like how she has been photoshopped in and obviously filters have been applied to her face which gives her an almost cartoon like quality. I think this would be good option for us to consider if we consider pursuing a song which is upbeat or girlish.

 Again this cover is very simple and quite similar to the above one for The Family Jewels. I however prefer the previous cover as I feel this lacks a professional touch with the font. The font is quite ordinary and does't have any unique touch to it. I do however think the colours in this cover were altered very well and make the cover look different to all people.







Overall, I feel these 2 covers are very girly, which is fair enough considering this is a female artist. I think the only thing we could take from these is that colour manipulation can be very effective, especially in the second cover which manipulates each persons view. I like the idea of using handwritten text, as seen in the first album ad this may be somewhere we would want to explore a little further.

Website

Like Lana Del Rey's website, again the theme and text employed in Marina and The Diamonds video is very simple. With a plain, texture background in very neutral colours and the text being the same that was used on her Electra Heart Album. However when I compare these 2 sites so far, I think I would prefer Lana Del Rey's as it still has that bit more extra to it. I feel this example is far to plain and almost boring and therefore would not hold our audience. So I like the idea of the plainer, neutral website but not so plain that it is boring. 


Audience

In terms of gender, the following graphic, obtained from Beluga by Groove shark, shows the division in her audience in terms of gender

This shows that Marina and The Diamonds has a bigger popularity amongst the female population. I would expect this considering her style and the fact that she herself is female. I don't males would be a sinterested in her music, they may be interested in her due to looks etc but not her music.

In terms of age, she is most popular with 18-24 year old females and less popular with 45-54 year old males. I understand this and would expect this, due to Marina and The Diamonds sound and style, which I believe is more suited and more tailored to a younger female audience, rather than the older male audience. I think she would possibly be a bit more popular amongst younger males, possibly within the 18-24 bracket, or under 30 for her appearance, but not necessarily because of her music. This is useful for us to apply to our artist because we now know how different factors can affect the different audiences we appeal too.

Similar Artist Research - Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey, is an american singer-songwriter. She is in a joint contract which she signed with Interscope, Polydor, and Stranger Records in 2011. Her music has been noted for its cinematic sound and its reference's to aspects of pop culture. Del Rey has stylised her music as 'hollywood sadcore'.

She has listed her many influences on her style and music. These include:

• American Beauty (film)
• Frank Sinatra
• Song of Myself (Poem)
• Time of Season (Song)

among others.

The above information is helpful as we can use these to inform the style in our videos.

I'm going to use Last.fm to research into the listening patterns of fans of Lana Del Rey, thus giving me a view of what to expect and how to target the music video and artist we produce.

Above is a selection of the listeners of Lana Del Rey. What I'm surprised about is that 7 out of the 12 listeners are Male.  Their age range is between 18-21, this shows us the general demographic of her listeners. This means that when it comes to us marketing our artist, we know now that we do actually need to proportion the media towards a male demographic and also to target an young adult audience.

By using a demographic analysis search engine, I discovered the gender division in support of lana del rey. It was quite shocking, as it shows she has a slightly greater male following.

This is extremely useful because we now have a deeper insight into how we should target an audience for an indie pop artist and therefore helps us to develop our final ideas.





Hollywood Sadcore

Del Rey describes hermusic as holywood sadcore. This is characterised by the following: (this is taken directly from Wikipedia) 'Time said the solid core of her sound was "movie music",^[94] with afairy-dusting of harp and an ominous timpani, laid out over-top a hip hop vocal cadence.'. This is just an interesting point that we could possibly take into consideration when we are considering the final sound of our artist.


Lana Del Rey's Website

I decided also it would be worthwhile to investigate the website of Lana Del Rey, considering this is something which we are going to have to do for our artist. I would believe that this website would be designed to tie in with the genre of the artist. In this website, it simply has clips of Del Rey's video, in the above screenshot, the video of young and beautiful. Then everything else is very plain and simple, with a black background and gold font. Even the font style is quite simple. The slight texture added to the font gives it that bit of detail but does not detract from other parts of the site. I think this is useful, and is probably a better option for us as there is a greater focus on the actual artist rather than the style and options of the website. 

Albums

Del Rey to date has only released 2 full albums, with many singles also being released. I'm going to focus solely on her actual album covers for the albums - Lana Del Rey aka Lizzy Grant and Born to Die.

When we look at these 2 album covers, again we can see an extreme simplicity. In this one, Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant, this is almost unprofessional looking. I don't particularly like this because of its unprofessional look. However, I do think it was sensible for Del Rey, a new artist, to stay simple with this, meaning people will focus more on her music. However, I feel with this style of album, people would be put off purchasing it, and therefore ultimately is negative for Del Rey's image.

This album cover however I definitely prefer as I feel it still keeps the simplicity obviously trying to be achieved in the first album, however has that professional touch to it and therefore makes it more appealing for an audience. I like especially the font used and the colours implemented, especially within the title 'Born to die' being the same colour its self. Del Rey herself again is dressed and styled very plainly. I think this album would be a better one for us to draw influence from because it still keeps that simplicity therefore allowing her voice to be the main focus, yet is more aesthetically pleasing, therefore making it more appealing for a modern audience. 

General Music Taste

I decided that it would be worthwhile to get a general overview of the music tastes of people our age. Therefore, I constructed a questionnaire, asking very general questions, just to see the general music taste within our year. Our group, brought 10 of the same questionnaire, down to our 6th form study, were they were distributed to a random selection of members of our year. Everyone we asked is 17. The only purpose of this is to gain a view of the music tastes of our generation. Below find selections and analysis of this questionnaire.

Below is a copy of our questionnaire which we used:

Gender: M F

Age: _________

Preferred Music Genre: _______________________________________________

Can you list 5 of your favorite artists:

1. _________________________________
2. _________________________________
3. _________________________________
4. _________________________________
5. _________________________________

How often do you listen to music? 

More than once a week 

Once a week

A few times a month

Once a month

Hardly Ever

How do you listen to music?

Spotify Youtube     Radio     Itunes       Other

If other, please give details:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How would you define the indie pop genre?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Can you name a few indie pop artists?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Can you name one person who would you define as a ‘style icon’ for you?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Preferred Music Genre:

To the left is a pie chart, demonstrating the preferred genres of all those people who completed the questionnaire. The most popular genre is Rock. This is interesting and could work in our favour, as indie music has a certain element of the rock genre weaved within its own genre.
The pop genre is the next most popular with 31% of the people we asked naming it as their preferred. This again is useful, as the actual element we are working with is indie pop, therefore meaning that these two genres are also related.
Therefore, this helps to show us that their is a demand in the general market for an artist within this genre.

Above is a selection for the first question and their answers. As you can see by the first and second example, there is a difficulty for people to select one genre and therefore choose to collaborate 2 or more. For example, the top right chose pop-rock. This is useful for us as we are collaborating indie and pop as one genre. Already an established genre, its still useful for us to see that people like the variety of 2 genres, and aren't just limiting themselves to one.


How often do you listen to music?

Everyone who answered our questionnaire stated that they listened to music more than once a week. This is a useful figure as we now know for definite that listening figures for music are still high, (as will be seen in later research) and that, although the demand for our genre isn't necessarily as high, the demand for new artists and songs is therefore making the market easier for us to manipulate.

Can you give a definition of indie pop?

To the right is a pie chart demonstrating how many out of the ten questioned knew what indie pop was. Surprisingly, only one person out of all those we questioned could actually give a reasonable answer for this question. The other 90% of people could not answer. This is very favourable for us, as this means within this genre that is a lot of room manoeuvre and is adaptable as it clearly  a less known genre. This therefore was a very useful question in our investigation.




The final question I want to analyse is the final question of our questionnaire 'Who would you define as a your style icon?'. Some of the answers we got are listed below. These are useful in helping us style the actors in our video and gives us an extra point for research some answers we got are:

• Bruce Springsteen
• Cara Delivigne
• Beyonce

  

Audience

I'm going to start by looking generally at the audience for indie pop music. This will then develop further to look at specific audiences for specific artists within this genre.

After some research online into the different audiences of indie pop artists, I have drawn the conclusion that the general audience for this genre is quite scattered throughout the population. It seems to cover mostly younger audiences however also is open to an older audience. When I take into consideration prominent artists within indie pop such as Fun or Lana Del Rey, in the general media they are portrayed as being more for a younger teenage/early 20s audience. In order to complete a more in depth research into our target audience, I will complete a series of questionnaires for 10 people within my year, those who fall within this category. I first of all will find out the people who have an interest in this genre, then give them a questionnaire with questions designed to find out as much about their listening habits, favourite artists, fashion, spending habits and reasons for this choice in genre.

Also, I think it would be worth while to get some of those questioned to listen to a few different songs within the genre, and also listen to what will be our final song and ask them tto list the different things that come to mind when they hear this song. I think its worth while to complete a rating of different songs - where each person questioned rates a few different songs within the genre and therefore we can see the type of sound the audience prefers.

Below is a questionnaire which we used to gain an insight into a general audience. We completed this while in school with a selection of boys and girls in our sith form study. This is just to give us the general overview of the listening patterns of people in our age group. Please see group blog for analysis and results:

Gender: M F

Age: _________

Preferred Music Genre: _______________________________________________

Can you list 5 of your favorite artists:

1. _________________________________
2. _________________________________
3. _________________________________
4. _________________________________
5. _________________________________

How often do you listen to music? 

More than once a week 

Once a week

A few times a month

Once a month

Hardly Ever

How do you listen to music?

Spotify Youtube     Radio     Itunes       Other

If other, please give details:

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How would you define the indie pop genre?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Can you name a few indie pop artists?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Can you name one person who would you define as a ‘style icon’ for you?

________________________________________________________________________

Genre - Indie Pop

Indie Pop Definition

Our target genre at this stage is Indie Pop. This is a genre of alternative rock music, which originated in UK in 1980s. Indie Pop was inspired by punk's DIY ethic and related ideologies.Indie Pop differs from Indie Rock in that it is more melodic, less abrasive and relatively angst free.

Fanzine
Indie Pop saw the introduction of the 'fanzine' a unofficial, amateur publication by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon.
An example of an indie pop fanzine is Tasty Fanzine. This is basically a blog set up by fans of indie pop, which allows them to express their opinions and review albums and artists in an open forum. What was interesting about this fanzine when I first got connected to the fanzine, there was0 2 options which allowed for anonymous posters to become a part of Tasty Fanzine. Clearly what is trying to be achieved by these fanzines is to give people the freedom to express their views in an open public domain.

Below is a screenshot of this fanzine. Please click Tasty Fanzine to visit this fanzine.

Features of Indie Pop

In technical terms, Indie Pop songs can be defined as structurally simple songs. They follow typical pop patterns, with a slight difference added to give them that indie element. The are usually played in the style of ABABA. Following are the different elements of indie pop music in relation to different instruments:

• When guitars are used, they usually play chords in a low-fi, warm strummy style. 
• Keyboards add a clear melodic layer. They will have simple parts that steadily ring through moving pitches. 
• Percussion helps to keep an upbeat, simple rhythm throughout the song and rarely becomes complicated. 
• Xylophones can be helpful in creating a cheerful environment.

In regards to the melody, it is usually revealed through the vocals. The actual song may entirely rely upon a catchy, upbeat and relatable chorus.