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dominicrowespom · 5 years

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MD6311 Major Project Evaluation

Background, Concept and Ideas

At the beginning of third year Ben and I came into this project with the intention of making a 13 track semi conceptual album based around seasons, having three songs for each season starting in Autumn ending in Summer. The hope was that it would propel ‘Two to a Room’ from an unknown name into exciting duo, the songs naturally being influenced by the music we listen to. 9 months later we’ve created a 12 track conceptual alternative hip hop album based around the same thing we originally intended, released 3 singles with 3 music videos, have a combined total of of just over 4000 steams on Spotify as well as an active following on Instagram.

Hip hop is traditionally known as a raw and honest genre of music, many artists have detailed the entirety of their life experiences onto their music in a very purposeful way. We have taken hip hop and altered it so that it applies and relates to the experience of uni students. It gives a voice to the people who are struggling during this period of life where everything seems a bit uncertain.

Some of our influences include:

Cosmo

King Krule

Loyle Carner

Rejjie Snow

Easy Life

Bakar

Many a time we’d find ourselves listening to one of their songs and being inspired by the way they’d mixed a bass line or how they added interesting/unique sounds and sections. We’re probably on the whole most similar to Bakar, however we bring our own style.

Audiences and Markets

Before deciding an audience and an artist identity we simply began playing and making music. We had a general basis as a band, having played a couple of shows under the same name in first year. Two to a Room somewhat subsided second year giving us a completely fresh start in third year, new music, new social media pages and a new image. We created personable tracks some light and some dark sounding, both instrumentally and lyrically quite downtrodden. While creating the album this helped us realise our sound, we were making the music of and relating to University students, depressed, drinking, smoking and in search for some sort of love and placeholder in this world. We continuously found ourselves adding Trippy elements to our music creating a stoner induced drug fuelled aesthetic.

The album is aimed at 16 to 24 year olds, teens and young adult transitioning into adulthood and the working world, getting by smoking spliffs and drinking a lot. For this reason we decided it would be best to push everything onto every streaming platforms though ‘distrokid’, an independent digital music distribution service. Through stats on (https://www.ifpi.org/news/IFPI-releases-2018-music-consumer-insight-report) I found that 86% of us listen to music through on-demand streaming. Young music consumers are most engaged streamers, with 57% of 16-24 year olds using a paid audio streaming service. This makes it the perfect place for our audience to find our music. We intend to release 10-50 exclusive copies of our album on CD due to peoples love of exclusivity and giveaways.

Our work is best understood sat back in a comfortable environment, where you can digest every word and feeling we were attempting to portray. There are hints of what our style, vibe and thought process is throughout our Instagram and music videos. The album can be related to if you’ve ever; gone on a night out, worked a dead end job or if you’ve ever just felt a bit stuck in life, so everyone. The reason it’s aimed at uni students is because they’re most likely to feel the entirety of emotions and lifestyle that we’ve displayed on our record.

There’s definitely already songs for sad people and a community for alternative hip hop but because our music experiments with so many different sounds and genres it’s hard to pigeonhole us into one that is preexisting. However the Cheltenham’s hip hop scene is the community closest to us, diverse in the artists and sonics that it holds. We’be home from hoping to get a foot in with the Cheltenham crowd, to wanting to unite it further and push it forward, there’s a lot of talent here.

Our only competition is ourselves, and that’s not the answer this evaluation requires but its the truth. If we solely see ourselves as the ones to beat and the ones to better taking influences from all sorts of places, we have no need to be in competition with anyone. I’d rather do the opposite and bring everyone so no one has competitors, just allies.

Promotional Strategies

Our journey for the public began at the start of October, our first Instagram upload being posted on the 3rd. We released a demo shortly after, mixed and mastered by ourselves to show our audience what we were about stylistically and aesthetically. For a demo it did far better than expected, accumulating close to 100 views in it’s first week, in time surpassing that. This gave us confidence to continue doing what we’d already set out to do. We kept our Instagram relatively busy, using photos taken by 1st year student Curtis, We then released our first single to all major streaming platforms mixed and mastered by Beau Peep. At the time none of this process had fully gone as we had planned, the song was released later than intended, videographers dropped out/couldn’t film for us and the B-side wasn’t mastered the desired way. In hindsight this moment was a good learning curve for future releases, we discovered the importance of planning properly and having everything set way in advance. It was also successful in how it was received, getting over 1000 listens in it’s first month.

In the time before our first and second single we wanted to keep our audiences attention so we decided to come up with a potential series idea named ‘In the Living Room’ airing our first episode on the 9th of January 2019. The idea was to do an acoustic set up, similar to The Tiny Desk concert, but in our living room. It was so that we could have a place to display the raw version of our music and potentially other artists as it’s something we’d found that a lot of music listeners enjoy hearing their favourite songs in a different setting sounding a little different.

We next turned our attentions towards Astronaut, we had the song finished and ready to release mid-January so we decided to begin a promotional campaign, doing a photoshoot a with friend of ours, third year student David Richards. We showed Ben Sanders the song, he enjoyed it and asked if he could do the visuals for it. We gladly accepted as it seemed like he was very keen, it took a few months to shoot it leaving a small amount of time to edit the video. In the meantime we uploaded several rows of promotional pictures to our Instagram building the excitement for the video. The video was eventually released in a hurry, and was still a little below the standard we were aiming for. As it was uploaded a little later than first anticipated it gave us less time to promote the album as a whole. But because we’d been promoting astronaut for so long we leaned into theme with a few more photos from another friend and third year student ‘Ryan Free’ who helped us reflect the feeling of the album being spaced out in a very concrete environment creating that juxtaposition in his photo by having us wear astronaut costumes in a fancy, old fashioned looking restaurant

We recorded the video for our third and final single a month before releasing the album so we could use it as part of the promotion cycle once the album was released. We organised for ‘drreproductions’ to shoot it for us and they agreed to get it shot in what turned out to be a very busy April. We played 2 gigs in the run up to the album launch while finishing the mastering of the album and organising both music videos. We hosted an album Launch at Smokey Joes on the 8th of May bringing in acts, photographers and videographers from uni to create a communal experience where we’re all helping each other. The laugh went very successfully, we were able to gain a profit from the night as well as a couple of new fans. At the time of writing our Instagram sits at 230 followers, the album has been streamed 3250 times

Evaluation

The album itself was successful. We released a 12 track solid body of work that will most definitely propel us into better things. There are a couple of standout tracks, Cruisn, Black Mould and Streets and Towns truly showcasing our maturity in terms of songwriting and storytelling. There were several songs that were dropped from the album and there were some last minute additions. ‘Hitting the Mark’ was one of the late attendees because we found the voice note on my phone from a few months prior while looking for vocal snippets to add to the album. Every new addition had to fit the tone of the project so it was difficult at times getting the order of tracks right, but eventually we settled on one that we both thought told our story best.

The album launch was a slightly stressful but very fun event. It took us several months to sort out, booking the venue in February but doing most of the leg work in April. We charged £2 at the door, over 60 people bought a ticket which helped us gain a profit from the night. The atmosphere was good the whole night, Toby Catt opening the evening, Beau Peep got the crowds arms moving, Real Triggz and KingOBithy brought the hype, local acts JPDL and Yogi Beats got everyone dancing and we were blessed to end the night.

In this major project we delivered what we set out to do and have surpassed it. We have the intention to continue as a duo past uni and bring this work with us. We have 2 festivals to play in the summer, the rest only the future knows.

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