Independent Research

Today an artist I really like and have listened to for the last three or four years, JME, released a new album called Blam! JME is a grime artist who is well known within his genre and is very successful in what he does, reaching a genre that has quite an underground, niche target market. He co-owns an independent record label with his brother Skepta and has established himself as a big artist in the industry in the last five or six years, having a well known distaste for the big record companies that sign up artists and take their most of their profits. I've found several of the marketing strategies used for the album very interesting and in my opinion they are all valuable points to take on board for this project.

The strategy for releasing the album has played to the strengths of the artist, using free social networking sites to promote his album at no cost to him. JME has a huge twitter fanbase, with over 30,000 people following him online, and he has used this to promote the album since May, creating a massive hype around the album and letting his fans know when they can expect the album. This is definitely something we could take on board when releasing our album as it is extremely cost effective and uses modern technology to promote the album to the correct target audience. He talks in a personal way to his fans online, allowing them to feel as if he is talking directly to them when promoting the album.

Tonight he also presented a live contest where people could enter a competition and get the chance to win signed prizes and merchandise. The contest was streamed via a video link on ustream.com, and there was live voting from people watching; prizes included signed t-shirts, posters and the album, as well as the main prize which was a signed iPad worth £600. The whole competition was very personal and gave the artist a chance to give something back to his fans and show his appreciation for their support. I think the personal touch is very important, especially for less well known artists as they need to show that they really do appreciate their fans for buying their music.

The album cover for Blam! is very eye catching. Bright colours are used and there is an artist's impression of JME on the front, in a cartoon design. This helps the album stand out when it's on the shelves which is also important as it would grab the attention of people who wouldn't necessarily know who JME is.



All of these techniques are really important to our project in my opinion. Although we are making a video for a different genre of music, like JME our artist will not be well known as it is a debut appearance. Therefore it will be important to grab the attention of the audience and also to reward the fans for supporting us. It is also a very clever marketing scheme because although the prizes for the giveaway will have been relatively expensive, the means by which they are given away, and the general hype created around the album itself was all produced through free means like facebook and twitter, meaning all sales of the album will result directly in profit. JME's marketing campaign has definitely been a success as on the first day of release it has managed to reach number 4 on the iTunes album chart - meaning there have been a lot of sales on the first day