Music Marketing Blog Post #2

    As a whole, this project was a task different than those I have faced before in school. The depth of the instructions, the variety of objectives to complete and the collective effort that had to be made as a group solidified this project as unparalleled  to anything in the past. 

    Beginning with the research of the project which is where we started off, we knew that we truly needed solid research due to our unfamiliarity with the genre of country. We wanted to make sure our case studies were thorough and had well balanced information that we could and would end up using in our presentation. We went with two major country labels to draw comparisons from, Big Machine and Mercury Records Nashville. Within the case study chart itself, we harped on marketing strategies that were relevant to some of the biggest country stars to elevate their success and profitability, such as frequent live performances, posts on social media, selling merchandise and features with other artists on big hits. The examples of country stars Chris Stapleton, Dolly Parton and Florida Georgia Line were all incredibly helpful when tackling our powerpoint presentation.

    Moving on, the planning for our music video went very smoothly and we were able to string together ideas with the storyboarding that we felt properly represented our song/singer. I find story boarding to be a major help when coming up with a vision for a piece that needs to be filmed. While shooting our film, which we were able to complete within the span of 2 days, we purposely took a plethora of shots so that when editing and making our final draft of the video, we would feel comfortable with the shots we took and not settle for anything less than that. We all agreed that having different locations in our video would help break up the scenes and not make it seem so repetitive. We believe that our idea of having one of us as the singer while two of us are acting out the story would be unique and a different approach than others. Additionally, we were adamant about the mise en scene of our video, due to our intentions of displaying common aspects of country, such as the outfits of the three characters, jeans, flannel, tank top, cowboy hat, guitar, and even one of the settings being in a neighborhood outside of Weston that we felt was more "country". The editing of our video was done smoothly with little conflict.

    Following the video, our powerpoint presentation. We followed the instructions on the canvas page and structured our presentation around the guidelines, while breaking up the topic of marketing trends into two slides. As a group, we split the duties of different slides and then made sure we reviewed each others work and pointed out certain flaws we found. We understood the importance of digitally marketing our artist, so we spent much time on the website, instagram and merchandise. Additionally, we mentioned how partnerships with companies are a strong method of marketing, therefore we came up with the idea of our artist partnering with a Whiskey company, which is a typical drink associated with the culture of country, as well as her own lip stick brand, which we highlighted in our music video, a signature look for our artist similar to that of Dolly Parton as we mention in the presentation. Overall, the presentation took a great deal of detail and research, however it was manageable and we are happy with our final product. The voicing over of the presentation was something I had never done before, and as someone who does not necessarily mind presenting in front of the class, I was a little bummed that we had to do this. However, we wrote on a separate document what was needed to talk about for our respective slides for a greater in depth breakdown of what was written on the slides.

    Reflecting back on the process of this project, believe that this is an experience that was needed for most of us, given the fact that we all lack familiarity with extensive and involved projects like this one. I am proud of how we managed our time, however I still think there is room for improvement. I think as a group we worked well and communicated well to collectively come up with ideas that we all approved of. For the Cambridge portfolio, I think that this project was a necessary stepping stone and is going to end up helping me in the long run, because of the exposure to a project that was a minimized, yet similar task that I had not seen before. I know how important it is going to be to stay on top of my portfolio and not lose sight of never settling for mediocrity.