Comparisons Of The Promotion Of Music Artist For 1960S The Beatles And 2000S Maroon 5
In the fiercely competitive world of radio, the hard truth is being good isn’t good enough. To gain a competitive advantage in reality, musicians need to promote their music. Music marketing is that key piece to the puzzle many musicians should put into the effort. The ability to market music with effective strategy is critical. Nevertheless, either 1960s the Beatles or 2000s Maroon 5, they did a variety of creative ideas along with their promotions. Different strategies cater to different portions of the audience. Their approach towards music promotions is slightly different yet so alike in some ways. So, this essay will compare some similarities and differences in the promotion by the Beatles and Maroon 5. To start with, the format and ways of music released for both artists in 1960s The Beatles and 2000s Maroon 5 were different. The Beatles', discography was originally released on the vinyl formats, with full-length long plays (LPs), short EPs and singles. The advantages of vinyl records are the unique vinyl sound as there are no audio lost or audio files get compressed when pressing a record. It sounds just as great as the producer or band intended. Aside from that, the nostalgic feel owning a physical copy of our favourite records, that we can’t get with streaming or digital download. Nevertheless, there are some disadvantages for vinyl formal including a new vinyl record cost over twice the price of a CD or digital download. Moreover, it is tricky to properly maintain a good record collection as the vinyl requires a great deal of care and are easily damaged and scraped, and ideally be stored in temperature and humidity-controlled environments. Sizes and portability were the biggest strikes against vinyl as we can’t take vinyl whenever we go. After all, over the years, The Beatles’ music albums have also been released on cassette, compact disc (CD), eight-track tape, USB stick, and reel-to-reel audiotape recording with the music industry’s gradually new formats development. However, the band’s international discography was complicated, as they often released a different version of their albums in other countries.
On the other hand, mostly Maroon 5’s song was released on compact disc (CD), long plays (LPs), extended plays (EPs), singles, music videos and digital download version. The benefits of the compact disc (CD) are most computers and cars can read CDs. Even if there is no CD drive, a DVD drive can usually also read them. Other than that, CDs are small, portable and good for storage of music contents for sale. Apart from that, digital music has created a whole new world in terms of when and how you can listen to your favourites artists’ tunes. Nowadays, there is a lot of music streaming platform that provides digital music downloads to on-demand music streaming service. For instance, Spotify, SoundCloud, Pandora, iTunes, Google Play Music and more. Music streaming is becoming more practical and portable and it can be accessed anytime. Besides, back in the days' people used to fall in love with a song they heard on radio and they had to buy the entire album even though they just want to hear the single song. Today, we can instantly download and create a playlist for the songs we love, digital downloads make it easy for you to access music at the tip of a click.
Next, the evolution of marketing strategies in the 1960s versus 2000s. The old fashioned way to promote music includes press kits, mailing lists, word of mouth, live performance, flyers and posters. Eye-Catching music flyers or posters are great for attracting attention and acting as a reminder for the music events or new release. There was once a time when flyers and posters were the dominant methods of promoting music. Between 1962 and 1965, the Beatles as a group gave around 52 known musical performance on a variety of BBC radio shows, in addition to many more interviews and unscheduled news appearances, together or individually. However, since the dawn of the internet and social media, the artist started to use the power of social media to promote their gigs. Nowadays, music marketing method is unlimited of creativity while consist of creating official websites, official social media account, official band’s merchandise, sponsorships and different version of albums. Compare to the Beatles music albums/ singles in 1960s, the Maroon 5’s full colour printed CD albums are created with more attractive packing styles, such as the classic plastic jewel cases, card sleeves and digipacks which allow for a greater canvas of content, lyrics, photo cards, track-listings, personal thank you’s and special messages can be incorporated within the CD cover and booklets. Aside from that, music video, as a short film that integrates a song with imagery, was produced for promotional purposes to promote the sale of music recordings as well.
During the early era of music videos, with film technology getting cheaper and more accessible, the growth of broadcast television and consequently the rise of pop culture. At the time, The Beatles were eager to give their fans the fullest audiovisual experience possible. Hence, The Beatles began producing promotional clips for their singles as a way to fulfil the demands of every show across the globe that wanted to book them. According to The Beatles Anthology (2000), “The mania made it pretty difficult to get around into the TV studios to promote their records so we thought we’d go and make our little films and put them on TV. ” said by George Harrison. They started with “We can work it out”, “Paperback Writer” and “Rain”. Fast forward to the present day, music videos are not limited to any concept, but use a wide range of styles and video-making techniques, including animation, documentary, a filmed version of the song’s live concert performance or lyric music videos. Till now, Maroon 5 had published around 37 official videos in the premiere of the video such as Youtube, MTV Hits, Facebook, Spotify, Tik Tok and more. Adding to this, The Beatles had released approximately 64 music videos, but mainly through their Youtube official channel.
Third, the differences of artist-fan relationship and interaction. The mobile internet has developed into a global information and communication centre. Social media started as an entertainment tool and evolved into a powerful marketing tool. In this, social media plays a major role in connecting the fans with the artist as an online fandom. To elaborate on this idea, Maroon 5 had specifically created a few interesting campaigns in social media that aligned perfectly with the theme of the music and the album art. For instance, “Red Bill Blues” Snapchat Campaign that collaborating between Snapchat and the band. The campaign took activations like ramifying Snapchat and creating an interactive module for the fan to use while expanding on the development that was already in used. The results have proved that the project and partnership was a great success. The strategy to incorporate the art, the platform and the music was accomplished and managed to create a unique presence in the digital world for the fans. This concept empowers the bond between fans and artist, thus gives them a new and exciting way to engage with their favourite artist. Due to the successful campaign in the past, yet Maroon 5 will still create a different impressive project along with their upcoming new release songs.
Another essential point includes music collaboration with other musicians. Musical collaboration is the creative part that two or more artists coming together and generate. It’s a combination of both creatives’ skills, styles, and knowledge into a song. Thus, when artists work together, they promote each other on their respective organic as well as digital channels which helps them both grow their reach. Maroon 5 has collaborated with several musicians for their tracks such as Moves Like Jagger featuring Christina Aguilera (2011), Payphone featuring Wiz Khalifa (2012) and Girls Like You featuring Cards B (2018) and more. Those songs all successfully reached the highest number 1 peak position in United States’s Billboard Hot 100. Adding on, Maroon 5 also has their fan club named “S. I. N Club” which provides legacy members receive first access to ticket pre-sales, along with access to special promotions. Relatively, The Beatles does not have any collaboration or special campaign for their fans owing to their short promotion, in a sense they only existed for seven years before they stopped working together. However, a term called “Beatlemania” originated during the early years of The Beatles success to describe the intense fan frenzy directed towards the band. Yet, the band holds many musical records to this day reflecting album sales and number one singles and they're music remains some of the most popular of all time.
On the contrary, there are some similarities in public relations for both artists between today and the 1960s. Good publicity can make or break a career. Simply stated, the more publicity the artist received and presents to reach new ears, the higher the possibility to build a bigger audience, and ultimately earn more fans. In fact on 7th February 1964, the Beatles headed their first American appearances, including a U. S. TV debut on the Ed Sullivan’s show. The Ed Sullivan Show was a massively popular American Sunday night variety show at Studio 50 in New York City. According to the original context from 1982 April 1st, Section A, Page 22 The New York Times, “There were about 73 million people were watching when “The Ed Sullivan Show” went on the air the night at Feb. 9, 1964. ” It is still supposed to be one of the largest viewing audiences ever in the States. Before the band went viral, the group used to filled with gigs played in clubs all over Europe and the United Kingdom. They were hired to play at a nightclub for several periods. Hence at there, playing five sets a night for 8 hours certainly helped them shaped their talent and they started to builds up their reputation. On the other side, Maroon 5 did also appeared on a variety of public shows to promote their brand. In particular, the group’s lead vocalist Adam Levine has served as a contestant judge on the reality talent television “The Voice” for 16 seasons, which was eight years long. ‘The Voice’ is an American singing competition television series and has been credited with reviving Maroon 5’s career and highly increased Maroon 5’s popularity. According to polling firm E-Poll Market Research, awareness of Levine and his band have nearly tripled since he joined the show. Furthermore, on October 7 2019, Maroon 5 was on set for their appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” to gave their debut performance of “Memories”. Besides, both of the band did a lot of concerts and tours all over the world along to promote their albums and performing live performance. Over the years, Maroon 5 has booming 7 world tour, that consisted of more than 650 of shows in South and North America, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Oceania and Australia. Also, the Beatles has completed 9 world tour, that included nearly 150 live shows in Europe, Asia, Australia, United States and the United Kingdom.
