Task 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Chris Andersen, Media Theorist

When it comes to promoting music videos, usually the record companies are less concerned about the music than they are about getting sales. The song is possibly the least important item on the agenda, the artist's star image is used in music videos to 'brand' the songs and make them more popular with a mass audience. This is not limited only to pop, but spans several genres. It is something that Chris Anderson refers to as 'The long Tail Theory', and is as follows:

"The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less of a need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare."

The basic idea behind this is that the 'hits' will sell well when they first come out, as they will be new and popular, but as time goes on, the popularity fades, but people still buy the music, although they form a very niche market.

 

The music video falls under the alternative country genre. Alternative country is very close to Americana in sound and attitude, though brings a more rebellious and urban edge, capturing the nostalgia of the south and moving it forward into a contemporary and urban setting. We wanted to steer clear from the gloss of mainstream Nashville in our attempt to create an edgy and alternative image for our star. Our artist name Dean Moriarty was coined from the Kerouac novel ‘On the Road’.

In the music video we attempted to capture the Beat generation atmosphere; one of a hedonistic existence balanced against an introspection and nomadic lifestyle. Beat fitted the troubled drinker so we embodied this attitude by incorporating bars and scantily clad women. It was important for us that we put distance between our video falling under alt.country and the country genre. The audience for alt.country tends to be more rebellious and free-thinking, whereas Nashville country is a far more rhinestone, achy-breaky heart affair.

 

The country genre represents the attitudes of ‘old-time’ America, whereas alt. country brings a contemporary feel, which we felt would appeal to a younger more rebellious audience . Not only that, but country is passé and we wanted a video that offered something new. Few alt. country stars have music videos. The market is clear. We saw an opportunity and we took it. The Beat represents a generation of disillusioned young people, as does alt. country, both rebelling against the expectations of the previous generations  set against vistas of the open road. This reflects the attitudes of our desired target audience.

The more introspective and poetic nature of their works reflects the lyrical quality of alt. country which surpasses country music whose focus is  primarily on rhyme over lexical dexterity . The images of America bring the rural element to the table, while the free-thinking and hedonism brings the alternative influence. We were more heavily influenced by the Beat generation in regard to the album covers and website for our artist. We transferred the desired characteristics onto the supplementary products choosing a muted colour scheme and dressing our artist in a western, yet urban and contemporary get –up, reflecting the coming together of the rural and urban which sums up the alt.country mentality. Our target audience is middle aged males. We have narrowed our audience down, basing our segregation on the works media theorist, Simon Wood who proposes Freudian theory in regard to explaining, particularly men’s attraction to country music. Those who listen to country music and find the characteristics of the singer or content of the lyrics attractive/desirable but lack themselves, vicariously adopt  the desirable traits as their own eg. Rugged manliness, rebellion. They can then talk about the music, intellectualising it and sounding impressive to peers as well as gaining enjoyment from the music and lifestyle that brings around simply through listening and studying it.


Having said this, we tried to bring an urban and contemporary feel to the products, particularly the website which features a sleek design and links to the artists FB, Twitter and Instagram page in hope of attracting a younger audience. We have looked at the general stereotypes surrounding the genre which we have adopted and used as to clearly situate our artist within the given genre, however, we have tried to create an original act.



 Artists such as The Felice Brothers, A.A.Bondy and Mark Lanegan were influences during the products infancy, however we have developed a hopefully unique image. Our artist possess an urban edge, more prevalent in punk than anything else, but the song itself remains alt.country. The rebellion our artist represents should help to appeal to our target audience.




Media theorist Richard Dyer proposes stars possess qualities that attract an audience and we have attempted to embody these traits such as rebellion, anti-authoritarian attitude etc within our artist.  Truly our music is about the authenticity and earthy-ness of ‘old-time’ America and trying to bring it forward with a contemporary edge to it. We are currently promoting a tour around Europe via the website, which also features a range of merchandise and albums which can be bought online.  We are in the fortunate position of appealing to both an older and slightly younger audience which means we can take full advantage of both as promotional tools.

We hope to feature in Mojo, Uncut and Alternate Root Magazine as these are read widely by an audience who would most likely enjoy the music we are offering. We also intend to feature on LoudCity radio, an alt. country channel. Word of mouth is going to be essential for our artists success. We will probably aim to build up hype around areas such as Brighton as there is a booming music scene, appreciative of the smaller and alternative acts. Our artist and album are too little known and have too little a fan base. Advertising on television would be futile.

 

Here is a video that my group recorded that relates this to our artist, we made a kind of mock culture show thing that explains it a bit more :