MUSIC VIDEO

DIGIPAK

Typically, indie digipaks show images of the band either on the front cover, inside or both. An example is the Kooks' digipak for their album 'Inside In Inside Out' which features the band on the front cover, inside and back cover.

However, we did not want to feature our band on the front cover of our digipak as we wanted to give them a sense of mystery and also show that they are more about the music than their image. However, in order to meet audience expectations we featured the band on the inside of our digipak in a similar way to in the Kooks' digipak, as the images had a rough cut effect as found in a scrapbook, which continues the indie image as anti-mainstream and D.I.Y. Other bands have also not featured on the front cover of their digipaks, an example is Kings of Leon, who even on their early album covers did not show an image of themselves, and this is a similar effect we wanted for our digipak.

Most bands digipaks also include a track list on the back cover to show the variety of songs on their album, this is something we incorporated into our own digipak. As well as this, there is usually an ongoing theme running throughout the digipak, for example in The Kooks' digipak there is a theme of the colour scheme red,black and white. In our digipak we used an ongoing theme of the swallows, which are shown all the way through the digipak. This ongoing theme meets audience expectations as it allows them to identify further with the band and their image and recognise these themes in the advert also.

Our digipak showing the ongoing theme of swallows throughout, the track list on the back cover, images of the band on the inside and an image not containing the band on the front cover, similar to Kings of Leon.

MAGAZINE ADVERT

Adverts for indie albums are typically very identifiable with the album itself. For example, they often have the same ongoing theme running through, in terms of use of colour or image. This meets audience expectations as it means the audience can identify the advert with the album and then easily go out and buy the album as they will already know what it looks like. As well as meeting audience expectations it also helps to market the product and sell the artist for this same reason. Marketing the product is also helped by giving the release date of the album, which we did on our digipak, and also showing where audiences can buy the album, which we did by putting 'amazon.com' on the advert, and putting the band's website up also.

We used the ongoing theme that featured in the digipak in the advert also, by putting the same image that is on the front cover of the digipak as the image in the advert, also featuring the swallows and the same recognisable font. This helps the audience to identify the band and what their album will look like, as well as making them want to know more about the band as they are not yet featured on the advert. Although typically indie bands feature on their adverts, we broke this convention as we wanted to give audiences something new and exciting, and not reveal everything about the band until they have downloaded the video and bought the music. We believe this is a good way of marketing the product and selling the artist, because although we needed to meet audience expectations of the indie genre, indie is also about being anti-mainstream and so we used an anti-mainstream idea in the selling of our artist by not featuring them on the advert or front of digipak.