R&P Post 2: Inventing a Music Artist

As part of my research into the music video, I have created my own music artist named M1LK. They are a indie music band with a hipster outlook. Here is the Pinterest moodboard that I created for them:

From this moodboard you can see the band M1LK's main traits such as:

• The main colours associated with them are pink, purple and blue, with pink having a large influence in creating the band's outlook (e.g. pink is the colour most strongly associated with M1LK). 
• They are portrayed as a cool and arty hipster band through their usually simple but stylish clothes and their creative marketing photographs, e.g. interesting and cool album covers, photo shoots of the band looking stylish. 
• Connecting with their fans through insightful lyrics and also political issues, for example feminism/equal gender rights which gain support for the band and increase their numbers of fans. 

Furthermore, as part of inventing a new artist I also made my own album covers for the band which you can see below:

In order to produce these album covers I had to take photographs of things that suited the band and their style. One way in which I achieved this was by using colours heavily associated with M1LK, predominantly the colours pink and purple. As these colours are connected with the band, the audience and fans then identify with the colours as representing the band themselves. Also, as M1LK are known for their style and 'cool' outlook, I was creative with my photographs. In the first album cover (titled 'Before the Rain Comes') I blurred my photograph to make it a little more mysterious and unconventional, and with the second album cover I photographed a sunset from a rooftop, relating to the title of the album ('The Sunset's Coming for Me') as well as giving it a hint of danger, adding to the coolness of M1LK. 

What I have learnt from this task of creating an entirely new music artist is that you need to market you artist in a way that enables the fans to easily identify and connect with them. The artist needs to have some main traits and styles that they identify with, allowing not only their fans but other people as well to identify them, e.g. by consistently using a particular colour for the artist will make people think of them when they see that certain colour. You also need to monitor how your artist appears in public- if they are known to have a certain dress sense or behave in a certain manner by their fans they need to keep this up outside of performances. Lastly, it is important to establish a strong connection between fans and the artist as if fans feel connected to the artist, they will 'spread the word' about them, increasing their audience.