Character sheet - marketing in the music world

A&R stand for artists and repertoire 

executive is somebody who would go out and find new talent and wprk with them and help them to become successful 

Michael Anthony Alago was an executive for Geffen Records round in the 80s. He worked with Misfits, Cyndi Lauper and he signed arguably one of the biggest rock and metal acts in the worldP: Metallica.

What he would do is go to all the bars and night clubs in New York and watch out for new bands. One example of this is the band White Zombie.

What changed and how?

In this situation (working with the unknown band at that time called White Zombie), Michael Largo, from a major record label, is willing to sign bands who are not very good musically, but have something else about them that is marketable. 

White Zombie appeared in the show called Beavis& Butt-head which was really popular back in the 90s. This marketing move really changer their game and catapulted it to a million units.

This is a result of this change in the NRA executive of being more about analysing data and seeing what is going on in the markets than the actual music. 

What happened is Spotify and Apple bought major companies which study data. This is also joined by Sound Charts and Chart metric which really give hard data to see how the trend of artists are going. Based on these data they buy the artists when they are not that successful and sell their work when their value peaks. 

Task:

Look at artists and see what it is that is special about them that can also be marketable.

1. Write a character sheet.

2. Go and find some unsigned music.

Useful websites: Band Camp, The Richer Unsigned

I wrote a character sheet of a Hard Rock band form my imagination.

After this I looked up a band similar to the one I created and I found on the website "The Richer Unsigned" a rock band called Barbarian Hermit.

Barbarian Hermit

This is a band of "five piece doom/sludge/stoner band based in Manchester, England. They were formed in 2013 and are currently signed to APF Records, through which they released their debut studio album Solitude and Savagery." Their album is now on Spotify too, so they started to put their work out there. But what would make them distinct then the other bands and special?

Watching the video form above, I noticed that they all have the same style: white males in their 40s with short hair and casual but pretty normal clothing considering the genre of their music. At first it seems that they are not that special but I think that embracing the norms to some extent while playing Hard rock music is not ordinary. Maybe exaggerating this contrast between their style of clothing and their music would draw attention.

Another marketing move that would make them well-known without needing any money, is creating an accessible website and creation an instagram account, maybe ever creating a filter on Instagram with their label.

Later on when they would get more and more famous, they could also collaborate with fashion trends and create clothes with their album cover which I think is already pretty distinct, considering that it drew my attention when I was scrolling through multiple album records on "The Richer Unsigned".