D8.2&3

 My plan:

Aims – 

To develop my songwriting skills by improving my music theory to create unique chords, melodies and harmonies for original material. 

 

Objectives – 

• Learn different chords, scales and modes on guitar.
• Improve my ability to turn lyrics into a melody and utilise iambic pentameter.

 

Plan/timescale 

Week 1 – Research, evidence in Blog 

Week 2 – Develop plan in line with discovery from research, Initial Demos, 3 ideas 

Week 3 – Develop and measure against objectives, find a new source to help me to improve it. 

Week 4 – Skill development with Evidence 

Week 5 – Completion of modified objectives  

Week 6 – reflection, evaluation and plan for next steps development 

 

 

 

(Awareness of Audience, Marketing plan, Demographic research, financial plan) 

Evaluation of week template:

• List activities
• Appropriate timescale
• Adjust goals?
• What skills have you developed
• What research evidence do you have

Week 1 - Research

• I've been reading a book called 'How to write one song' by Jeff Tweedy to research different methods and techniques to help write lyrics.
• This is exercise helps you to connect verbs and nouns that you do not typically see together:

Changing my plan

During research for my careers assignment, i have found a University course that I am interested in: Music business/management/media. Due to this, i believe it will be more helpful for me to improve on my management and business skills in preparation for me to apply for the course.  

Week 1 - Research

Music business and management involves roles such as: artist management, financial management, creating marketing and promotion strategies, managing and booking live events, A&R and licensing.

Aims - to improve my general music management/business/marketing skills

Objectives - use social media to promote, create potential next steps for the band I am managing, get in contact with venues ect....

In order to improve my management skills effectively, I have put myself forward to manage my close friends band Vega.

Promotion and Marketing

Notes from this video:

• Learn how to build ADs through adsmanager
• Learn how app platforms work
• Organic marketing - engage with people and brands on social media to build artist audience
• Network by meeting people/going to conferences/gigs

How the instagram platform works:

https://later.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-works/

Instagram has multiple algorithms (feed, reels, stories, explore) with their own set ranking signals like engagement and content type. Content that performs well across all algorithms gets more visibility. Reels and the explore page are attention grabbing whereas stories favour consistency.

How to use instagram algorithm to your advantage for promotion:

• Utilise Instagram story stickers to encourage engagement e.g polls, emoji sliders and question stickers.
• Write strong captions that ask followers to share their thoughts in the comments, tag a friend or click the link in your bio - its confirmed that comments increase feed ranking and therefore lead to more visibility.
• Add relevant hashtags to your posts caption to reach more people, 5-10 hashtags increases engagement effectively.
• Track and monitor your Instagram analytics to see whats working and can help you come up with a marketing plan.

Figuring out when to post on Instagram is vital for viewer engagement. For the best results, you can check your Instagram Insights to see when your followers are most active and schedule your post for about 30-60 minutes before the peak. 

Artist Management

https://www.indieflow.me/blog/artist-management

An artist manager needs to excel in a few keys areas, key responsibilities of an artist manager:

Career planning and development:

• Help shape the career of an artist by providing direction.
• Search for new and exciting opportunities.
• Allow the artist to have creative freedom.
• Make suggestions if growth and progression is stalling.

Booking and scheduling:

• Book out schedules with with gigs, interviews and PR opportunities.
• Work alongside booking agents and record labels.
• Contact venues and make bookings.

Financial management:

• Securing the best deal for an artist.
• Calculate profit.
• Spreadsheet and budget artists income.

Branding and marketing:

• Keep up with current trends.
• Boost brand awareness.
• Suggest ideas for marketing/promotional strategies.

Goals, next steps and ideas...

In order for Vega to keep progressing I want to brainstorm some potential ideas to put forward to the band.

• Post a rehearsal video on Instagram to keep fanbase engaged
• Tease time in the studio on Instagram
• Christmas cover
• Merch
• Burning CDs
• Shared calendar for better accessibility and to make bookings easier 
• Another music video
• Marketing plans
• Website

Evaluation:

Week 2 - Improving my booking and scheduling skills:

Emailing Venues

I spent some time this week reaching out to music venues and pubs with live music in and around Somerset with gig enquiries for the band. Although I only heard back from one venue (The Vaults) this was vital to improve my professional communication skills, and helped be to build and structure emails to important people.

GIG!!!

The band has managed to find a gig in Bristol this Friday!! It is super last minute so me and the band are trying to make as much promotional material as quick as possible.

Contacting a radio station to promote:

In order to branch out from just listeners and attendees, i contacted a local Bristol radio station to promote the gig, but most importantly potentially get the band a bit of radio coverage.

I also sent one of the bands most recent releases to the BBC to be played on Bristols local radio station!

Creating a Tech Spec for the gig:

In preparation for the gig, I created a Tech Spec to send to the venue.

Week 3 - Improving my marketing and promotion skills

Marketing plan until Friday night:

In order to effectively promote the gig on social media, I will need to post some sort of promotional material everyday. The boys have already recorded a few videos were they talk about the gig in detail, so i will be posting them throughout the week. I also want to get a recording of their rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday and post sneak peaks on the bands Instagram story. I want to make a compilation video to post on Instagram to promote the gig.

Making a promotional video on premier:

Today I decided to make a promotional video to post on Instagram. I did this on Premier as it is the app I am most familiar with and find easy to navigate. I imported footage from previous gigs, recorded on an old camcorder to give a retro, grainy effect. I then cut the clips up into tiny segments and arranged them in time with the background music - Vega's recent release. At the end of the compilation video I put the gig details such as location and date. I don't have a lot of experience on Premier so this was a great learning experience to improve my video editing skills.

Publishing the video on Social media:

In order to reach as many people as possible, I decided to post the video on three platforms: Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

On Instagram, I tried to use as many relevant hashtags as possible to increase engagement. I also reposted the video on the band Instagram story to promote even further. By doing all of this i managed to get the post on all four of the Instagram algorithms, allowing the video to get pretty decent engagement! 1.2K views, 40 likes, 4 comments and 7 shares.

I did exactly the same process on TikTok as I did on Instagram - post and repost on story. However, the video did a lot worse on TikTok, only getting around 500 views and 15 likes.

The post on Facebook only got around 70 views, and for some reason I cant see how many likes we got.

Week 4 - 

The gig was a success!! The boys played exceptionally well and made great connections with the headliners at the gig. We managed to gain an additional 6 followers on Instagram from people at the gig, including a record label and the venue itself. 

Week 5 - collecting connections

Dan has given me contact with a local venue, Leather and Lace Bar, who needs openers for gigs in Bridgewater. I called Grace the events manager today on behalf of Vega to arrange the gig. She said the pub is for new and emerging bands, whether they're young or old. Unfortunately there is no availability this year, so the gig has been pencilled in the diary for mid February time.

Evaluation

Throughout my 5 weeks of managing VEGA, I have picked up a lot of skills. I have learnt how to use social media strategically for a marketing advantage. This included creating a promotional video on premier, which greatly improved my editing skills. I also improved my promotional skills by branching out and contacting radio stations about the gig. I learnt how to communicate effectively and professionally with events managers at multiple venues, improving both my written (email) and verbal (phone calls) communication. My overall management skills improved by my attempts to keep the band progressing whether thats in rehearsal or online. However, in order for me to progress further i need to look deeper into financial management by possibly calculating profit and budgets for the band. I lacked some creative input music wise, but i wanted to make a point to step back from that and let the band have full control over their image and music.