The document analyzes conventions in the indie rock music genre across different media formats. It examines conventions for band image and style, music videos, album artwork and digipak design, and band websites. While conventions exist, the document finds that indie rock takes diverse forms and each band puts its own spin on conventions. Completing this research helped the author understand how to position their fictional band within the genre across various media outlets.

1. MUSIC GENRE
CONVENTIONS.
- EXTENDED RESEARCH -

2. OUR GENRE
Genre is often not easy to define with forms of media due to various hybrids and
the constant reinvention of existing ones. Due to the various issues we
encountered at the start of this module in terms of the changing of groups and the
complications that were involved in that, I thought it would be useful to complete
some extended research on genre conventions. We decided at the start of this
project that our act falls into the genre of ‘Indie rock’. This is largely due to the
instruments involved in the band, and the styling/star image we had in mind at the
time. This estimate has remained accurate and our continuing development has
always conformed to the majority of the conventions of this genre. Indie Rock is a
genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. The
term "indie rock" became associated with the bands and genres that remained
dedicated to their independent status. It is heavily linked to acts such as Arctic
Monkeys and Oasis, who are popularised by their working class background,
dedication to the ‘music’, and loyalty to their respective record labels. However Indie
Rock is extremely diverse. In recent years, the term has been coined to label a
variety of bands with vastly different sounds such as The 1975, Bastille and Alt-J.

3. LOOK
Due to the recent expansive nature of the genre, the ‘indie rock’ look has become harder to
characterise. The contrast represents the breadth of music styles and backgrounds within the genre.
As these photos accurately present, their is no ‘set trend’. This therefore gave us great control and
creative choice when choosing the outfits for our band.
(The kooks, Arctic Monkeys, alt-j, oasis, hurts,
bastille, kaiser chiefs, THE 1975.)

4. MUSIC VIDEOS
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the large bulk of our genre research thus far has
been within the area of music videos. This is obviously because that is what
we are creating. Conventions of indie Rock music videos include live
performance, which is either theatrically constructed or taken from genuine
footage. This further emphasises their interest in the ‘music’ and shows that
they are music artists at core, as opposed to commercial figureheads for a
record label. Also, the lead singer of such bands is commonly recognised for
their confidence and bravado e.g. Alex Turner, Noel Gallagher. If the band
are in fact featured at all, these characters are likely to lead the narrative of
the video with other members of the band taking the back seat. The bands
are often seen to be doing anarchic, ‘cool’ things such as smoking to
contribute to their cult image.

5. CONVENTIONAL EXAMPLES
Here are some examples of conventional ‘indie rock’ music videos. Despite all of these three videos
featuring some of the fore-mentioned conventions, they are all noticeably different stylistically and in
their concept. The one thing these videos do have in common is the way they present the ‘star
image’ of the band, as a cool group of friends who all have a passion for live music and ‘rock’, and
are not interested in commercial success or marketing. This is something we have really emphasised
heavily with our concept-lead video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQH8ZTgna3Q
THIS VIDEO ‘R U MINE?’ BY THE ARCTIC
MONKEYS IS VERY CLEVER AND FEATURES
NUMEROUS CONVENTIONS OF AN INDIE
ROCK MUSIC VIDEO. IT DISPLAYS THE
LEAD SINGER WITH A LIKEABLE,
ATTRACTIVE ARROGANCE AND BRAVADO.
IT FEATURES LIVE PERFORMANCE AND A
CATALOGUE OF RECKLESS BEHAVIOUR.
FURTHERMORE, IT IS FILMED IN WAY THAT
GIVES THE IMPRESSION OF A LACK OF
EFFORT DESPITE ACTUALLY BEING VERY
IMPRESSIVE TECHNICALLY. MORE THAN
ANYTHING, IT FIRMLY SOLIDIFIES THE
BANDS STAR IMAGE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv7vr6oE3U8
IN A SIMILAR WAY TO HOW WE DO
IN OUR VIDEO FOR SHORT
CUTAWAY, THIS KINGS OF LEON
VIDEO FOR THE SONG ‘RED
MORNING LIGHT’ DISPLAYS THE
BAND IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT.
HERE, WE SEE THEM
PERFORMING, TOURING AND
GENERALLY BEING ‘ROCKSTARS’.
IT HAS A CORE OF LIVE
PERFORMANCE AND THE
FOOTAGE IS GENUINE. IT
PRESENTS THEM ENTIRELY AS A
‘BAND’ AND NOT A ‘PRODUCT’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=QkubQCI4Fxo
WE HAVE OFTEN CITED THIS
VIDEO, THE 1975’S ‘GIRLS’ AS
A MAJOR SOURCE OF
INSPIRATION. IT FEATURES A
BAND PERFORMANCE,
NONCHALANT AND
UNAFFECTED BEHAVIOUR
FROM THE BAND, AND A LEAD
SINGER WITH PRESENCE AND
ATTITUDE.

6. DIGIPAKS
Despite already having some preliminary ideas about our own digipak, I felt it would be useful to look
at the conventions of those made for bands within our genre. As with the styling of the bands, the
digipaks vary greatly. This is unsurprising as some bands ‘look’ is obviously more commercially
viable than others, and some bands might not feel comfortable being the face of their own marketing.
With bands within this genre, they often see themselves clearly as musicians, not celebrities. As is
seen earlier on in the blog, we had an interesting idea about using the different faces of the band to
form one ‘entity’ for the front and back of the digipak. We looked at different album covers within the
genre that might have a similar theme and found it is a fairly regular convention with a couple of
bands doing a different interpretation of the same concept.
KAISER CHIEFS KINGS OF LEON BLUR
ALL THREE OF THESE INDIE ROCK BOY BANDS EXPLOIT THE IDEA OF SIMPLISTIC PORTRAITURE BUT TO
DIFFERENT EFFECTS.

7. DIGIPAKS (Inner)
Another key design feature of the digipak as a
whole, is the inner. This is often exploited for
various things such as continued design
reinforcement or further information about the
band and the process of creating the album. I had
a look at the digipaks of some bands within the
same genre to see if I could learn anything from
them.

8. These are two digipaks made for the Arctic Monkeys. ‘Whatever You Say I Am,
That’s What I’m Not’ (left) was released in 2006 for one of their earlier albums.
The digipak has great visual continuity with the black and white, ‘grungey’
photography throughout. Unsurprisingly, the inner contains some general
information about the band and their process, as they weren’t mainstream then
as they are today. This means that many people buying the album might know
fairly little about them. For ‘AM’ above, they have chosen a vastly different
colour scheme and design strategy. This could possibly connote the undoubted
development in the bands image and style from 2006 to 2013, when this album
was released. Interestingly, there is also no information about the band. This is
likely to be because, at this point, the band had reached the peak of their
popularity and critical acclaim and providing this information would be futile.
This is the digipak for Alt-J’s album ‘An Awesome Wave’. It was released in 2012, as the bands debut
album. This informs us to the mass ambition of the band in the design and concept behind the digipak. The
cover and back cover features some aesthetically interesting, alternative artwork. This is understandable
as it suits they're style of music and the band don't have a recognised look, and are not especially visually
marketable. They are content for they're music to ‘do the talking’ and for they're faces to remain unknown.
However, what surprises me most is that the inner to the digipak is incredibly minimalistic and has almost
no text at all. It does include a unique holster for the disk itself but includes no information relating to the
bands rise in the music industry up to the point of them making this album. This shows us as a group that
they're is no real pressure on what we must include due to it also being the bands debut album. Our
decision making must coincide with the style of the digipak in whole, and that is likely to determine
whether we use text or not. However, I am interested in including some form of short biography as it does
offer the band more personality but debatably this could come on the website, making the digipak purely a
platform for music alone.

9. WEBSITE
• A website can be hugely important for a band in terms of
marketing, defining who they are, and being the first port of
call for genuine fans. Through websites they can create a
useful relationship with those that follow them making their
fan-base an inclusive community, and playing to todays
participatory culture. Like all other aspects of the industry,
websites can be defined by genre and the separation in
conventions continue. I analysed some websites of bands
within the genre of indie rock, importantly choosing groups
that had differing styles to see if this was drastically
represented in their website or if there was actually
continuity between them.

10. ARCTIC MONKEYS OFFICIAL
WEBSITE
This is the website homepage for
the Arctic Monkey’s. Considering
that they are one of the more
dark and brooding bands within
the ‘indie rock’ genre, it is no
surprise that they're website
reflects this and has a bold black
and white colour scheme. The
logo is printed across the top in
the bands standard typography.
The top bar features various links
to other aspects of the website
such as gig dates, photos and
general news. The main feature
of the site is a large video file
that displays one the bands most
recent festival performances,
showing that they are current
and active with their music.

11. THE KOOKS OFFICIAL WEBSITE
This is the official website homepage
for The Kooks. Alternative to the Arctic
Monkey’s, this page is considerably
lighter yet still has some ominous
elements such as the large beating
heart as a central motif. There is a
large emphasis on their new album
with various links encouraging the
audience to listen to it, and then buy it
via iTunes, Amazon or from their
official store. In the top right hand
corner, the website unsurprisingly
highlights the influx in social
networking as a method of marketing.
This is something I am definitely
interested in using in our website as it
looks good aesthetically and is
realistic. This is because a new and not
well know band would heavily rely on
social networking as a free and
effective method of publicity, that also
helps them to easily communicate with
the fans they do have.

12. ALT-J OFFICIAL WEBSITE
This is the official homepage for
Alt-J’s website. This is incredibly
minimalistic in its design. Much like
the other websites, it includes the
conventional links away from the
homepage for things such as news,
upcoming gigs and the official
shop. Unlike the others, the name of
the band is the central focus of
attention, being in the middle of the
screen and the considerably largest
font. Interestingly, this website’s
design shows great intertextuality
with the design of the digipack for
their latest album, with identical
colour scheme and design features.
This is something that pleases an
audience as it shows continuity
throughout the different forms of
media, and is something I am
interested in emulating with
whatever design we choose.

13. CONCLUSION?
• Completing this task has allowed me understand
where we should be ‘pitching’ our group in the
various different media outlets we will exercise.
Upon reflection, it has taught me that even when
working within a specific genre, there is plenty of
versatility as groups are always intending to create
something that is ‘new’ and ‘different’. Despite not
actually releasing our product into the music
industry, we will endeavour to do the same.