Research into Indie-Pop Genre through Belle and Sebastian

Chaos Killed the Dinosaurs are an indie pop group, and so I researched the genre in order to understand the conventions and to look for influences. I did this by researching the Scottish indie-pop band Belle and Sebastian. 

Belle and Sebastian

This indie-pop band were formed in 1996. They have had much critical acclaim as well as some commercial success. Their name is a reference to a 1960s French children's book. They have a very wide target audience, young to middle aged (15-55) males and females. This all absolutely fits with the indie-pop genre, the critical acclaim and  high quality original music distancing the band from mainstream pop without alienating potential audiences. The band appears unbranded to an audience, and this creates a focus primarily on their music, and satisfies audiences when they feel they have come across the band by themselves. 

The image above is consistent with the band image and the unpackaged feel: the styling is natural, and they are in plain clothes with very little/no make up and very few accessories. This connotes that the band do not have a persona but rather are themselves playing music together. This could help audiences feel more connected to anything they learn about their individual personalities, because they would feel that they are learning about a real person instead of an image created by a record company. I feel that it is very clever and appealing to audiences to package an artist in this way. 

Until I did this research I was unaware that the band name was a reference, but  I did not feel any exclusion or inability to relate to the artist, which means that it should not matter if some of our audience do not recognise the reference from which Chaos Killed the Dinosaurs originates. Although we will create a more exciting and vibrant artist identity, I think it is a good idea to take influence from Belle and Sebastian and represent the artist image as realistic and consistent, and as if this is how the characters are in real life, Arianna in particular. This would generate stronger and potentially wider audience appeal. 

I feel the indie pop genre is very appropriate to both the song and artist image, and Chaos Killed the Dinosaurs should fit within this genre, particularly by producing hopefully critically acclaimed music with a wide appeal. The acclaim and music quality is likely to appeal to the older audience whereas the music videos and artist identity may appeal more to the younger demographic; there is something for everyone. 

Website Analysis: The Strokes, Lady Gaga, Destiny's Child

This post demonstrates the research I have done into similar artists and their websites, in order to identify conventions and similarities as well as how artists create their unique identity via a website and how they target their audience.

The Strokes

The Strokes are an all male band, and whilst we are female, they have artist identity I find very interesting because they manage to portray a cool image seemingly effortlessly and have a wide and loyal fan base. I have analysed the basic features of the website below that I find relevant think should feature on the Chaos Killed The Dinosaurs website.

I think the website is successful because it has incredibly good usability and fulfils gratifications of the typical audience member for their band: wanting to be more informed and seeking entertainment. The strokes have a much stronger focus on their music, performances and events than on artist image which other artists portray through options such as photos and behind the scenes clips. This portrays The Strokes as artists who are truthful to their personalities; connoting that this is the life they actually lead, they enjoy writing and playing their music. Our website will probably have more of a focus on artist identity, because we feel that there is more of a requirement of this by our primary audience.

Lady Gaga

Although Lady Gaga is a very unique solo artist, she has similarities to our lead singer, Arianna, who has a similar image of independence and being wild and uncontrollable.

Her website is more image focuses than that of The Strokes; the background is the promo-shot of her new album.  However, the website still has great usability; we will take influence from this. She also has a music video on the homepage, we will take influence from this because our music video is one of the most effective forms of marketing we will create on this project.

Destiny's Child

Destiny's Child are an all female group so it is appropriate for us to research their website. It takes more of a blog style, but still features the majority of the conventions annotated on the strokes website. Music is the primary focus, however artist image and identity is also key here, and their are three different images used: one main image, one from the album cover and one as a blog photo. This enables the band to create a more complex image and gives them greater flexibility of connotations because they have three individual spaces and so if they wish, three individual connotations. However, these images all work together in synergy and their are plenty of similarities, which is something we will have to consider if we go for lots of images on our website.

Research websites has taught me the conventional features of a website, the importance of good usability and it has made me aware that we must make a conscious choice on the balance between musical focus and an artist identity focus, which all three of these websites have clearly done. Overall this research has been very useful and will be a great help when to planning and designing the website for Chaos Killed The Dinosaurs.

Record Label Name

We have chosen our record label company's name to be 'Revolutionary Records.'

The word revolutionary is associated with radically new or innovative ideas that are often beyond established traditions. The words is a signifier of change and all this associations work well with our band. Chaos killed the dinosaurs is a edgy, grunge band who offer something different with a crazy main singer, and an edgy band, so our record label name suits that.

Revolutionary Records will be an independent record label, in order to attract our audience. Often people looking for something less mainstream, and not typical pop music, look to independent record companies. They know that independent record labels often offer something different and therefore our company will be tailored to work with indie bands, such as our indie-pop band. This will help to attract our target audience.

We still have to decide on a record label logo to match the overall edgy theme.

Final Band Name

J.D. in Heathers

Although B*tch in the Band suited the identity of our band well, we felt that the name could be misconstrued as it carries negative connotations about women. Our new band name is Chaos Killed the Dinosaurs. This is adapted from a quote from the film Heathers: 'chaos is beautiful, chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darling'. We used this because we like the film and we thought it had synergy with our debut song, with its themes of insanity and in fact the character we're quoting (J.D.) has obsessive stalkerish tendencies but is also very cool and compelling, just like we hope Arianna to be in the video and as a band member. Thus from now on we will refer to the band as Chaos Killed the Dinosaurs.

Meeting 02/10/13

After a group meeting with the teachers today, we discussed our feedback from the presentation in more depth and came up with a list of what the next steps were for us in the pre-production process.

- Further research around album art

- Annotate and explore the lyrics of the song

- Pin point our concept, layers and ending

- Decide whether we want our band to be sexual subjects

- Plan each studio set up

- Ensure all sections of video flow

- Arrange a technical meeting before the next presentation

Record Label

We decided that we wanted a British independent record label for our band Chaos Killed the Dinosaurs. After researching the types of record companies there are, we realised that with our style and indie-pop sound, we would be better tailored to these independent companies who work with similar bands.

We searched for British Independent Record Companies and came up with a selection of choices:

Cherry Red Records is a London-based independent record label formed in 1978. Since the late 1980s, the company has also become known for reissuing out-of-print albums from other labels, and is owner of the subsidiary labels Cherry Pop Records and BBR (Big Break Records).

Fierce Panda Records is a London-based independent record label, with its first release in February 1994. It also produced a small number of releases that year by now famous artists such as Ash, The Bluetones, Baby Bird and Supergrass. Fierce Panda is also credited with releases by Coldplay, Astronaut, Air Traffic, Seafood, and more.

Heist Or Hit Records is an independent record label located in Surrey and Manchester, founded in late 2007 by Mick Scholefield. Its most notable signees are The Answering Machine, LoveLikeFire, Rapids! and Pomegranates.

Mute Records is a British record label. It was founded in 1978 by Daniel Miller and featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Depeche Mode, Erasure, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, and Yazoo.

Transgressive Records is an independent record label based in London formed in 2004. Founders Tim Dellow and Toby L first met at a Bloc Party gig. The first release on the label was 1am by The Subways, released in September 2004. The company has since formed Transgressive Management and Transgressive Publishing (whose roster includes Noisettes, Mystery Jets, Two Door Cinema Club amongst others).

We decided that we really liked Transgressive Records as it is fairly modern with a relatively similar style of artists. We thought the name was quite enticing but the logo was not representative of this. The other companies we researched had more interesting logos. We therefore want to base the record label we create on their sort of company, with a similar style of name, but use our other research when thinking about a logo. We also want to base our record label around this one because we want an independent company, based in London, and although Transgressive Records specializes in indie-rock, whereas with our record company we would like to specialize in indie-pop.

We have further research to do into the name of our record company.

Music Website Research

This is a post to show the research we have done into artist websites, including a band and a few female artists to see how bands and females are represented and common conventions of music artists websites. This will help us design ours to attract our target audience and represent our band.

Eliza Doolittle 

This is the homepage to the website of the female artist Eliza Doolittle. It is very minimalistic with only a picture of her in the background. The pictures change, like a slideshow, in the background and reveal different shots of Eliza Doolittle. Each shot represents her; some showing her performing live, others showing her in a shoot and some of her just enjoying herself and getting a feeling of what she does with her spare time along with how she dresses and a representation of her. Her name at the top is still minimalistic, but stands out bold and in white from the rest of the page, emphasizing the artist and the font connoting that she is current and modern.

When you scroll over the different boxes such as 'Instagram,' and 'Twitter,' pictures or tweets by Eliza appear in the box. This reveal a bit more about her and inform the audience of what she is currently up to and help the audience to feel more connected with her. This is a good way of targeting her audience through current technology that her audience are familiar with. The front page of Eliza Doolittle's music website is a good example of targeting the audience through a webpage and keeping current and modern for the younger audience and helping them to engage with you through social media.


Kate Nash

Kate Nash, another solo female artist, takes a more blog style music website. It it quite a quirky website with posts about where Kate has been, her in the press and updates on her recent projects and music to keep her fans up to date! There is also a gallery, videos and a link to her Instagram at the bottom of the page, so the audience can follow what she is up to. The website brands Kate Bush as quite a quirky individual with music matching her and the blog style presentation of the website keeps the audience interested as if it something quite different and not done by many musicians. The page expresses the artists identity explicitly and helps the audience to make a connection with the artist and the music, through consistent and synergistic branding.


Paramore

I have chosen to analyse Paramore's website on top of the female artists because Paramore are an edgy band with a main female lead. Ours is an all female band, but with a slightly over-the-top crazy female lead, so there could be some similarities between our bands. Paramore has a main colour theme of black and white as the background to their website, to ensure that not too much attention is taken away from the websites pictures and updates about the band. The text on the website is all in the same font, ensuring that branding is consistent throughout the website. Paramore's website also features links to the band's Instagram, tweets, photos and videos ensuring that their followers can be loyal and find out what they have been up to. Emphasising their genre as slightly edgy, at the top of the page the photos are horizontal and appear 'cut up,' connoting edginess and something slightly different, like the band and the website helps to create the band's identity clearly.


The main similarities throughout these websites are the need for audience interaction to help them follow the artists and inform them of the artists updates, music and current information. This helps die-hard fans to continue to feel connected to the artist, and new fans to find out what kind of artist they are, and the genre of music they play as well as link in to their personal life and find out a bit more about them. All the websites are very visual and modern, with links to 'Twitter' and 'Instagram,' keeping audiences attracted with images and ensuring that the younger generation have a way to follow the artists through technology. One final important aspect of all the websites is the synergy that runs through the websites, with consistent fonts, colour schemes and style of the website to create the artists identity and image.