Institutions

Music promos are often put onto popular UK music channels. Different channels normally pursue different bands/artists according to their specific genre of music.

MTV

An American music and video channel. It is based in New York City and it targets young adults. This is the same market which our band aims to impress due to young adults being the main buyers of indie music. It has a national broadcast and was first aired in 1980. It originally was lead by a range of dj's who would select tracks to play to the public, MTV has nowadays brought into reality shows and other TV programmes which could be popular with young adults. 

FLAVA

Flava is a music company who buys into hiphop/RnB artists. The music channel will be looked at regularly by people interested in this genre of music, to look up the newest songs and artists who are breaking into the industry. It is available on "sky" on the music channel selection. This institution wouldn't appeal to our band, due to them promoting a specific genre of music which is the opposite to the style we are trying to promote.

KERRANG

This music channel has a very narrow market. They mainly play heavy metal and/or rock. Although it has been shown to be hugely successful with it's target market of rockers, it isn't versatile with it's audience. The channel doesn't have a structured day of records which it will play, it allows it's viewers to text in and request their own music to be shown on the channel. This allows it's audience to be part of the channel and see their requested song, allowing them to become part of the channel.

4MUSIC

This is a music entertainment channel based in the UK. The music channel plays a wide range of genre's, hitting a large market in which the channel can appeal too. 4Music is part of the Box Television group, and is one of few channels to be broadcasted on wide screen television.  Like MTV, the channel also broadcasts television programmes. This shows the channel deals with a range of different media, in order to gain their audience. 4 Music also broadcasts particular summer festivals, and has links with the host of 'T4 on the beach'. 

4 music would be the best one for our band to use as it'n institution. They play many genre's of music, so indie pop would be able to be shown and appreciated and the large market which it shows off too will give our band a large amount of fans when their name begins to be recognised. If a festival could also be booked for our band, a large live audience would also give them the experience they need, playing to real people without editing from recording booths. This institution would be able to successfully launch our band into the success they need.

Exhibtion

Bauer Media

Bauer Media Group has a 50% stake in the British television company 'Box Television' Box Television acts as the main music producer in Britain - producing several popular music channels across the UK, these include:

• 4Music
• The Box
• Heat
• Kerrang
• Kiss
• Magic
• Smash Hits

Bauer Media also has a large number of offices that are located all over the world, this would be a big advantage as then a large number of countries would also see the music promo - spreading our promo all across the world. Below is a list of where offices are located:

• Germany
• USA
• Spain
• France
• Austria
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Hungary
• Czech Republic
• Mexico
• China
• Russia
• Slovakia
• United Kingdom
• Nigeria
• Australia

By targeting countries all over the world, our Indie Band are available on the music channels which millions of people have access to - our band can also go on tour to these other countries when they become more successful, increasing future sales and profit, but also making them alot more known to other across the planet. This allows us to promote the band to 19 million UK adults alone at one time, plus multiple other countries.

Bauer Media also own the popular magazine 'Q' which is known globally:

'Q' is a popular and successful magazine that is released monthly here in the UK. The two men which founded the magazine are David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, at first they were dismayed, they thought that there was a huge market who weren't targeted but regularly bought music CD's. Q magazine puts its self in another league compared to other music magazines, this is because of its monthly production and high standards of printing and photography. This shows that the company is of a high quality and has very high standards, everything being put into the magazine will be of very good quality due to the large sum of money being put into each edition. Producing a high quality magazine and putting large sums of money into the publishing encourages buyers to spend their own money on it due to the attractive and eye catching covers, that they regularly have on the front and the clear images that will be shown inside of the magazine. Q is published by Bauer Media Group and would be the best form of exhibition for our band '4Kicks' - giving them huge advertisement and getting their foot in the door of the music world. Q pride themselves in advertising the newest up and coming bands, usually of the indie genre. So this is perfect for our Indie band as the target market of the magazine are regular buyers so this would get our band well known by the Indie audience thus increasing sales as everyone will have knowledge of the band branding and style of music they play. People end up relying on Q magazine as a way to inform them with the up to date information on the music world (preferred genre indie).

This magazine is also available to be read and researched online. By it having it's own website, users are able to vote on polls on bands, and be part of other interactive things that the magazine can't offer. The magazine also uses a 5 star rating system. This rates bands adverts, singles and other aspects they may create in order to promote. We used this star rating when thinking about our magazine advert, as a rating usually appears. Customers see this and think that if a professional company rates the band highly, then they are likely to enjoy their music. This magazine influenced our magazine advert as we rated our band  with "****" this four star rating shows the band to be worth the customers time and money. 

 

Marketing & Promotion

Promotion
4Kicks are a rock indie pop band

They are signed to "Sony Music Entertainment."
This is the second largest music company in the world. It is now owned and controlled by
"Song Cooperation of America"


It was a company founded in 1929 made from the merging of many record companies. It was created in the USA as a subsidary of Japan's Sony cooperation. The sony headquarters lies in New York, with a chairman who is called Doug Morris. 


The sony website offers users deals, in order to grab their attention to buy into their music.
They have multiple strategies such as a "free listening trial" giving them a taster of different bands/artists that they might like.

The website allows users to filter through the music by selecting certain genres etc, which they are most interested in, or are looking for a certain song - the website also shows the users the most popular bands listened to at the moment. This will allow 4Kicks target market the ability to find them with ease and not wasting time looking for them, also this would save 4Kicks having to promote themselves to appear into the public. 

Influential bands of our chosen genre are 'The Script', 'Scouting For Girls' and many more other, have also used Sony Music Entertainment to promote themselves and getting them into the public, this is why we have chosen them to promote 4Kicks. Proof of success with the same genre has encouraged us that they would be an ideal choice for our band to be promoted by them.

Marketing
Traditional media institutions, where marketing is performed are struggling to compete and survive in today modern market, this is because the internet is taking over where people are more likely to buy MP3 to put onto their iPods rather than buying CD's and uploading them, websites or organisations that are very successful in this market are iTunes and Amazon - they both sell MP3s to download onto media devices. This year the outlet store HMV has gone into administration due to the lack of sales in music and films as they are loosing out to the internet sales. This is creating such media shops to die our, traditional methods of marketing such as this are shown to be losing their touch, due to not being able to keep up with the rate of sales in todays competitive market which is occurring online rather than in stores. Our main worry is that our band '4Kicks' is going to lose out on sales as our main target market (students) will be able to get hold of our media illegally due to the ease of the internet - this is becoming very popular in todays world, a lot of bands etc are loosing out on sales due to illegal downloads off the internet.