RESEARCH: Methods Used to Market and Distribute Product

For this piece of research I am going to look at how Air Traffic marketed and distributed their song 'Shooting Star'. First let's look at how they marketed the song:

• Promo music video

Air Traffic released a promotional music .video for the song, to get people into the song. This was done over music channels and the internet, where Youtube is the most popular website for a band to post a promo video onto.

• Social Networking

The second way in which Air Traffic market new songs such as 'Shooting Star' is on the social networking sites of Twitter, Facebook and Myspace.

Above is a collection of social networking sites that Air Traffic use to distribute their music. While the band is currently on a break, these pages are still being updated. In the modern age of technology this is a very god way to market your product.

• Fans talking about them

Word of mouth is a key tool to market a product! When one person they might just tell there mate, or spread it on a social networking site or forum. In the below picture, I just searched on Twitter for their song and the product is still being talked about years after release - no doubt helping them to generate more and more downloads of the song.

• Air Traffic website

In the prime of releasing their album, Air Traffic would have heavily marketed the product on their own website. However, as the band currently are on a break not much is on the website.

• Gigs

For me, as the listener, this is the best way for a band to market a song. If they can go out on stage at a gig and do a great performance of a song, a fan is more likely to buy it!

Now lets look at the tools are Air Traffic actually used to distribute and sell their song 'Shooting Star':

• iTunes

The biggest way to currently sell a product is probably iTunes, where the song 'Shooting Star' is still being bought. Here is a printscreen proving this:

• CD

The second way to distribute the song 'Shooting Star' is through purchases of their physical CD's, as the album or single. This can be instore or over a sight online such as Amazon.

• Downloads

This method of selling a music product is similar to on iTunes, but just downloads of any internet site. There are a lot of other websites were you can download music.

Justification of Song Choice

At the point of choosing the song we wanted to make a music video for, we had done some research and knew we were doing an indie song. There are a few sub genres of indie however, so we had to make a decision of which of the sub genre we were gonna go for. I actually personally conducted some research on Facebook and posted a question asking people to respond. This is a print screen evidencing this:

As you can say indie rock was the clear winner, so the song to do would definitely be an indie rock one. This is due to the fact I wanted people to actually enjoy the song with the video. Me and my friend stumbled across a song we both like, Shooting Star by Air Traffic. This song was of slow tempo and the lyrics were clear. We both had fresh ideas to bring to the music video so this seemed like a good song to do!

RESEARCH: Deconstruction of 'Air Traffic - Shooting Star' music video

Above is the official promotional music video for the song that my partner Alex Saker and I are going to create our interpretation of. Referring to Andrew Goodwin's theory which has been previously written about on the blog, this video is a hybrid. This means the video is a mix of two music video types. One of which is a conceptual video, where the artist portrays their own concept of the song, and the other is performance as there are many bits of the band singing. The whole video is about a girl this guy is in love with, and see's her as his 'shooting star', however things are falling apart. So this is how Air Traffic must have interpreted the video.

Following the research that I have already conducted I can instantly tell this music is an indie product as soon as the music video begins. The colour scheme of all indie products that I have looked at so far have been grey or bleak, and this one is the same as you can see below:

The picture above is of the opening scene, which is a girl standing still with the wind blowing her through the window, this is all in very slow motion. Throughout the music video it switches between the band performing and slow motion shots of this women in different scenarios. In these first few sentences the girl is looking at what looks like love notes, and is throwing them on the floor. This is an indication that there has been a fall out. Although the lyrics at this point are showing how much the boy loves the girl which is a bit contradictory for the moment. The way everyone is dressed, including the band, isn't particularly indie so this isn't the clearest representation of the genre.

After the opening few scenes of the girl looking though love notes, the video stamps down some branding. There is an image of a lamp smashing and then various other things falling in slow motion and smashing. This is very much in the same style of the album cover I have deconstructed so this lets the viewer know which album the song is off. As the song progresses items are still falling and smashing around a couple who are standing opposite looking at each other. Both people are only in there underwear, which is trying to be romantic showing they have been stripped down to the bear minimum, and it's all about them. Following this there are many more performance scenes of the band, who now have things falling around them and smashing. There is no clear on beat editing but there elements of it, as on big drum notes things seem to hit the floor.

During the next verse, the song is about the male and female meeting up and realising what they have is to good to lose. The clothing worn by the couple at this point is very dark, being either grey or black. These colours not only represent indie well, but connote to the viewer that the couple are discussing serious things. After this the video goes back to the band performing, which can be seen below:

Things are still falling around the band as you can see, and a lot is already on the floor. I think this is trying to relate to the song lyrics as the couple still have issues to resolve. Following this the couple kiss and then the song goes back to the woman at the start. This is when it clicks with the viewer that the boy in the other relationship was the boy that this girl is thinking about. Therefore he was choosing between two girls and as he made bad decisions things fell through and he lost his shooting star.

RESEARCH: Deconstruction of Air Traffic album cover

Above is the album cover for Air Traffic which the song shooting star comes from. Most the indie products I have looked at so far show barely any colour, this album cover is quite colourful though. I think this is because Air Traffic are not established enough to just go with a bleak colour scheme, and would go unnoticed. Having said this, Air Traffic have contradicted this but not having much branding on the front cover. If it wasn't for the words 'Air Traffic' in small font then you could not tell who's album this was. The images used of scattered household items around a disk. String seems to be holding the whole set together, and it looks like if they string broke it would all fall apart. Perhaps this is trying to show the music is cool, creative and 'edgy'. This relaxed and random front cover fits the indie genre well. Having said the cover seems random, there is some relevance. I think the relvance is with the name of the album 'Fractured life'. The products all seem fractured and like the string is holding them together.There are a lot of colours on this album cover, which don't seem to connote much. Although, they could be connoting that the album contains a range of songs, from fast to slow indie rock.

RESEARCH: Artist Research

Here is a slideshow researching into the band 'Air Traffic':

Artist Research

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Final Decision of song

The song that we have decided to do as our final video is Air Traffic - Shooting Star. Below is a print screen of the conversation that took place between Alex Saker and I in order to decide this over Facebook:

RESEARCH: Genre Research

Here is a powerpoint I created researching into the music genre indie:

Final genre research

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