Album Advertisement Research...

In order for me to produce a good design for my album advertisement it is essential for me to research into existing album adverts for the same genre of music (Alternative Rock). I went and bought some music magazines and looked through my collection of Kerrang! magazines to see what the conventions of an Alternative Rock album advert are.

As I was looking through my copies of Kerrang!, Q and NME I found these four adverts for different albums. They all belong two of them belong to a similar genre of music to Kings Of Leon/"The Mags" and one of them belongs to a slightly different genre of music, but it is good for me look at all sorts of album advertisements in order to understand how I need to produce a successful album advert as part of my coursework.

THE PRODIGY - Invaders Must Die


This album advert for The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die is the one of the four I chose that belongs to a slightly different genre of music to the other three examples I chose. The Prodigy describe their music as electronic rock with punk vocal elements so it is very different from the Alternative Rock genre that we are trying to represent but it is advertised in the same magazines as those of similar style to our genre. It is different from the others because it has a photo of the CD itself and lots of text rather than one large image like in the other adverts. I think this is an aspect of the album adverts that does not fit in with the conventions of our genre of music because it makes the selling aspect of the advert more obvious to the viewer, whereas for the other adverts it focuses more on the album artwork/bands creativity which takes the emphasis off the fact that they are ultimately trying to sell as many albums as possible.

YOUMEATSIX - Hold Me Down


This Youmeatsix album advert for Hold Me Down is a much simpler advert that the Prodigy example as it simply contains the same artwork that is shown on the album itself but with the date of the release, title, stores where it will be sold and the record labels logo. This is the typical album advertisment for Alternative Rock/Indie bands as it promotes their band branding as a creative and mysterious type which draws in their specific target market.

LOSTPROPHETS - The Betrayed


This Lostprophets album advert is a very simple advert that again reflects the subtle selling nature of this particular genre of music. The black and white aspect is a typical convention of the Rock album advertisments. The simple text/font also adds to the mysterious aspect of the genre that helps to sell the music. It is important to notice the part of the advert that mentions the albums' availability on iTunes and the band's website. This is all new technology that needs to be mentioned when I create my own album advertisement. I also like the intertextuality of this album advertisment as it is reminiscent of the iconic Queen video for the song Bohemian Rhapsody shown in this still image of the video;

THEM CROOKED VULTURES


This album advert is my favourite of my four examples because of it's simplicity and it's effectiveness. I am going to analyse this particular album advertisement for the Them Crooked Vultures album in my next blog post in much more detail because this band are the most similar to our band in terms of musical genre and creative direction.