Music Promotion & PR
The Only Shadows experience
As one of my selected production modules for second year, I chose Music Promotion & PR!
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The aim of this module was to be able to work collaboratively in groups to create a Music PR agency based on our chosen Music genre (Ours was Indie rock). Following this, our end goal was to help support a local artist or band, of our choosing, with the promotion and PR of an upcoming event or release, such as an album or single.
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My primary roles within the group included A&R manager and Photographer.
This was very exciting for me because it meant I got to basically search Spotify, Birmingham Promoters and the website of every local Birmingham venue to try and find our perfect artist.
Indie, alternative & Indie rock artists make up about 90% of my playlists so I honestly had the best time on this search, and I am so happy with how it turned out because it's at this stage that I get to introduce you to 'Only Shadows'!!
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During the time we worked with them, Only Shadows were a four-piece Indie Rock band from Nuneaton. The band weren't signed at the time yet had reached over 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, with their most popular single 'Fight Milk' reaching almost 700,000 total listens.
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It took a while to initially get any response from the band. I emailed them towards the start of October 2017 and after a week with no response, started to give up hope. Then, the following week, (and not long before we had to do a presentation on our confirmed artist), I decided to message the group on Facebook, and funnily enough, got a response within 10 minutes. Following this, I had a phone call with drummer Paul, and bassist Alex, to discuss absolutely everything.
As this was a student project, we had absolutely no budget and therefore our marketing techniques had to adhere to those that we thought Only Shadows would be most interested in, and, most in need of.
After scrolling endlessly through every social media page they had available, all signs pointed towards photos.
I worked part time as a student technician at my University, which meant I got full and free access to all the studios, which for this project worked massively in my favour. I was honest with the OS members when saying I had never done a band photoshoot before, but in all honesty I think it was the free part that influenced them most.
You can see some of the photos from the photoshoot below! (The whole album can be found in the photography section of this portfolio)
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The photos and the A&R side of things were my primary roles however as a group we did go on to promote the band and their upcoming shows until, and after, our module was finished. So much so, we got to help BTS (and also be in) one of their latest music videos 'Stay Close To Me'.
(It's safe to say wearing a morph suit for 8 hours straight wasn't the most pleasant of experiences however I absolutely loved being able to see the video being filmed). We also conducted interviews with the band, promoted them online, and filmed one of their gigs for a promotional video.
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This project is definitely one that sparked my initial interest in marketing. My role as content curator didn't involve much marketing, but I found myself becoming engrossed in the progress of the photos and video once they were uploaded onto social media, and how they influenced audiences interactions with the bands pages.
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