Having a 'niche'?

Lady Gaga

When Lady Gaga first became famous with her number 1 'Just Dance', it was clear to see that she had a very niche persona and style. Her eccentric style, music video's and in some cases lyrics make her totally different from any other artist. The way she uses costumes and styling to promote herself is very similar to they David Bowie promoted himself (high heels and brightly coloured hair), and this seems to be a popular way to become noticed and gain recognition from potential fans. Gaga used to perform without all the excess costume and persona, and played different music, just her and her piano, in nightclubs and bars when with the label Def Jam, but was then dropped, and Gaga found Redone, which is where her success really came about with the eccentric extras. 

The Online Revolution

What is the online revolution?

With the creation of the internet, and Web 2.0, a revolution has taken place in the online world, affecting the music industry hugely. Downloads and streaming can now take place of songs, albums, and videos. Downloading tracks from places like iTunes and Amazon now contribute to the official chart, and this is the most dominant way of how the charts pan out. However with this new revolution, comes the disadvantage of illegal downloading. This costs the music industry huge amounts of losses in revenue, as music is being distributed for free, whilst still costing huge amounts to record and publish.

David Bowie

Before the online revolution and the mass-usage of the internet came about as a form of promotion for music, artists already had ways of promoting themselves. 

David tried to promote himself as a musician through a number of different bands, swapping to another when their singles didn't do very well. But he struck gold when he release 'Space Oddity' as a solo artist a week before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, as the BBC used it as the background music to the landing music. Space was cool at this point in time, gaining 'Space Oddity' a lot more attention due to it being part of a popular subject. To continue this success, Bowie cleverly played on the space theme and created himself as a persona. He was now part of a band called 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars' and created an album all based around space. At this point Glam Rock came about, Bowie played up to this, dying his hair electric colours, wearing high heels and glittery costumes when performing live. All of this acted as promotion as it drew incredible amounts of attention to him and his music from the public, creating himself a larger and larger fan base, and therefore increasing his success in the music industry.

As more and more success came to him, Bowie started to use the more traditional forms of promotion, for example posters and bill boards advertising singles and albums, radio interviews, his music being played on the radio, fan meet and greet signings, newspaper reviews of his gigs, magazine adverts, displays at the front desk of a record shop showcasing his latest single/album and many more. These forms were used by the majority of artists that were popular around this time, so wasn't as extraordinary as his first forms of promotion, but since he had already gained a growing fan-base and success, this was understandable. 

Arctic Monkeys

Arctic monkeys formed in 2002, a lot later than David Bowie, so had the advantage of the existence of the internet. They're a four piece from the suburbs of Sheffield in the Indie Rock genre. They started the revolution of online marketing and promotion, becoming famous by an unfinished track uploaded to MySpace by a friend of the band. They were unaware what MySpace even was at the time, but it was being updated with their music, and was being shared across the internet, growing and growing in popularity. This meant that they gained their fame for free as well as not being part of a record label, so were independent to do whatever they felt was best for the band. 

Target Audience

Bowling For Soup
Bowling For Soup are a pop-punk band from Texas, best known for their singles "Girl All the Bad Guys Want", "Punk Rock 101", "High School Never Ends", and "1985". I would say that their target audience are around 16 - 35 year olds, mixed gender and who are into jokey and lighthearted rock music. This is due to quite frequent use of strong language and explicit subjects being described, even if it is for comical effect on the audience.

Because of the quite young target audience, Bowling For Soup use the internet to promote themselves to their fans and potential fans. For example, when logging onto their website http://bowlingforsoup.com/main.php a video pops up and automatically plays their latest music video and single, as well as advertising their album at the end of the song. This pop-up is shown to the right:
Another form of promotion that Bowling For Soup use is tours, for example the Get Happy Tour and also supporting larger bands such as Blink 182. This allows fans of the bands that they are supporting to hear new music and hopefully like it, leading into the creation of new fans for Bowling For Soup.


Eastside Jimmy

Eastside Jimmy are also a pop-punk band, but from Hertforshire, UK and are a four piece. They're on a smaller scale of fame compared to Bowling For Soup, but do have similarities. They also use the internet as a way to promote themselves as well as keep in touch with their target audience and fans. You can see this on the right. They were originally set up about 12 years ago, but have made a huge comeback in the last 2 years. Most of their fans are similar to what they used to be, so another way that Eastside Jimmy connect with their audience is by posting on Facebook old photo's from gigs they did years ago. Many of their fans remember them like this, and enjoy using the pictures to reminisce. Their target audience used to be mixed gender, aged 25-35, but now their audience has grown up with the band, so their target audience are now around 40-55. To adapt to their target audience with their promotion, they make sure they play shows that are accesible and appealing to them. For example, they played a local festival called Rhythms of the World which targets a wide audience, a large sector of it being middle aged and perfect for potential fans of Eastside Jimmy, especially as their genre of music is also one of the more dominant genres of artists that play throughout the rest of the festival.

Calvin Harris

Calvin Harris is a music artist and producer in the genre of dance music, aimed at teenagers and young adults. He is more mainstream that Bowling For Soup and Eastside Jimmy, which could be due to dance music being more popular that rock/alternative in this current period of time. To make a name for himself and to promote his album, Calvin Harris supported much larger artists like Groove Armada and Faithless, being effective due to their similar music genre and target market. As well as this, he helped to produce and co-write Kylie Minogue's album 'X', being very effective due to Kylie being an extremely popular and respected artist within the dance genre. Calvin Harris also promoted his work by remixing other artists songs, using bands such as Primal Scream and Kaiser Cheifs. He also worked with the rap artist Dizzee Rascal and created the song 'Dance Wiv Me', which went to number 1 in the UK Chart. Dizzee Rascal has a very similar target audience, so this promotes Calvin Harris further through Dizze Rascal's fans. Calvin Harris also has a website thast is regularly updated with blog posts and available tour dates as a form of promotion towards his fans to find out more about him and where he's playing, enhacing their knowledge of him as an artist.

What is the best way to promote an album and why?

From looking at these artists, it's clear that the use of the internet is probably the best form of promotion in this day and age, for most music genres and target audiences. There is 24/7 accesibility to it from all over the world, and can be updated and changed extremely quickly. For audiences to find and listen to music, the response from the internet is almost instant, it takes one search in Google or YouTube to find a link to stream or watch the video of this artist to hear and watch them. These sites also come up with results linking to other similar arists, social networks do this particularly well as they have millions of pages for music artists, and these music artists can also interact with eachother, so more and more connections can be made and accessed by the audience.