R&B Artists and Music Labels
The first step to creating an artist of your own is to understand the genre they are taking on. Because of this, my group began our research by uncovering the best music labels for our singer and how they are marketed. We believed that understanding the strategies of these artists would further help us understand how to create our own R&B “next big thing.
Spotlight Artists
Bruno Mars started his music career in 2010 with his hit release of “Just the Way You Are.” The marketing for his label has been majorly on advertisements and promotion through his Instagram and Facebook account, where he posts photos from concerts, behind the scenes of recording, and shots with his team. This is done to reach out to his target audience of younger listeners better. He can be streamed on services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, and YouTube Music.
Kehlani first started their music career in 2009 when they were featured as a lead singer in PopLyfe. They started streaming their own music on Soundcloud exclusively but began to branch out to Spotify and Apple Music once their popularity grew. They started using these platforms with their latest hit “Cloud 19.” In addition to involvement with new platforms, Kehlani has had multiple other artists feature in their songs, such as G-Eazy, and had their song “Gangsta” in the newest Suicide Squad movie. Unlike other artists, Kehlani uses their social media for more personal than business use, creating a more personal feel to their character.
Another big label with interest in our genre is Sony Music Entertainment, which has artists such as Foushee and Giveon contracted. They were originally named “ARC” which stood for American Record Corporation in 1929. This changed when the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) bought the rights to the company in 1938. The name was officially changed to Sony Music Entertainment in 1987 when Sony bought the label for $2 billion.
Spotlight Artists
Foushee came to fame when she revealed on TikTok that she was the original writer of the song “Deep End” by Sleepy Hallow. When publicity rose over this, she released a full-length version of the song, getting millions of people to listen. She now streams her music on platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, and YouTube Music. A unique trait about her is her lack of formality on social media, making minimal captions for big marketing posts and posting casual photos. This is done to give her a more humble image to the public, rather than a high-end celebrity.
Giveon started his career in 2018 with his debut song “Garden Kisses.” He featured many big-name artists in his songs such as Justin Bieber and Drake which increased his publicity incredibly. He gained major inspiration from other R&B artists such as Frank Ocean and Frank Sinatra. Recently, he combined two of his projects in order to create a stronger connection between his old and new fan base to never forget where he started. In addition to sticking to roots, he lacks the use of autotune in order to embrace the authenticity of his voice.
Breakdown of Music Video
When first listening to our song “If I Ever Fell In Love Again” by Shai, we took into consideration the tempo of the song to how we envisioned the shots would be composed for our music video. Since this song goes at a slow speed, we decided to take on a story that would persevere through slower storytelling. We started by envisioning the post-breakup gym obsession that most men go through and creating a type of montage of that event. Although this type of plotline syncs with the lyrics to our song, we decided to go with a more gloomy and downbeat mood. Because of this, our story emerged into a lover mourning the loss of his past relationship, knowing he will never find another woman like her. Our character is writing a love song to his past lover dedicating how nobody will ever replace her in his heart. His state of remembrance is shown through polaroids that convert into flashbacks of memories of them together. As our character gets taken in and out of these memories, he is thrown into other situations, such as seeing other couples or even thinking he sees her, sending him to an exhaustion break that causes him to pace around his room aimlessly until he finally finds a way to finish his song.
Shot Inspiration
Inspiration for these shots came from a small unfinished documentary that I had started working on with a friend of mine on a local R&B/Alternative artist he knew. We wanted to incorporate the dim, gloomy tone of the underexposed shots with a few key lights to create a dramatic atmosphere in our piece. A difference we would make to these would be a more blue tone than orange, to help enhance the sad essence.
Album Marketing
In order to match these tones, my team decided to choose a more simplistic/minimalistic approach to our cover art. Since the story revolves around being caught in the memories that are symbolized through polaroid pictures, we believed the look of just a simple polaroid with the album name would be fitting. However, since we are not completely sure this image gives off the complete image of what we want our album to be, we are considering it a rough draft for the moment.
Next Steps
The next steps for our team would be to further create an image for our artist themself. We decided to change his name to Kaden since it is more of a simple name and we want to include a more eye-catching last name. Our vision for the rest of the marketing on our artist would include dark blues and maroons to represent the somber tone of his music and the stories he tells through his lyrics. His Instagram and website would reflect the same simplistic and minimalistic nature of the presumed album cover. We believed that you can say a lot while saying very little, which is an image we want to show with our artist.
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