Research and Planning- How artists and bands in the music industry are branded and marketed today.

For research into branding and marketing bands/artists i have come across a very helpful slide show that was great for me to get a small understanding of the difference between artists genre's and how the branding and marketing differs for each genre.

http://www.slideshare.net/smcmediastudies/branding-in-the-music-industry-10028887. 

This is a good example of a Band logo. This is the logo for Linkin Park and if you look closely you can see the L and P that have been cleverly put together to create this logo.  

Today's music industry expects that musicians have a deep knowledge and understanding of marketing, otherwise they don't get very far. To start marketing a band has to have a brand identity that defines them, using colour, design, a logo, name or symbol that put together distinguishes them for their chosen audience. Establishing a brand identity takes a lot of careful thought and consideration, as the public will be judging the band as a whole from this. Another important aspect of marketing is to know exactly who the bands target audience is so you know how to promote your band to certain people. Bands have to consider:- 

• Age
• Gender
• Language
• Income/ Social class
• Country
•  Hobbies

Bands should also take social media as an advantage as it is a free way to get their products to fans. Bands have websites where they explain their music and style, they blog to show pictures of tours and message fans, have Facebook to create a fan page, and updates from the bands page will show up on fan's walls for friends to see, passing information on to a third party. Finally MySpace is another useful site for marketing as it is often the first place for people to look for tour dates.

This is Rise to Remain's Official Band page on Facebook.

However, today there are a few problems in the music industry online and in general, especially for unsigned bands because of :-

• Lack of money to record and promote new CD's
• Small income from gigs and tours
• fans have begun to illegally download music from the internet, and few dedicated fans to buy CD's and see live performances.

 On the other hand, in my research i have come across many help websites for bands that give them useful pointers on what to do to promote and market themselves such as the following link:-

http://www.squidoo.com/branding-in-the-music-industry