Making It Docuseries: The Vision behind the project

As a student that is enthusiastic about nurturing music creators and those interested in working in the industry, I wanted my major project to provide an educational function to aspiring music professionals. In a competitive environment such as the UK music industry it can be helpful to have some insight into how it works and what it takes to be a part of it. By combining my interests in artist management and documentary series, I created an Artist Manager series . It documents the journey of a band and their progression with their manager. In the following blogs, this portfolio will cover the complete process of the project, and the reasons behind my management.

Market research 

Whilst I knew that I wanted the series to educate people, I needed to find out more about my target audience so that I could create a product that would fulfil their needs. 

I conducted a survey to find out what my audiences would want to learn about and the way they would best receive this type of content. This survey, however, was only completed by 9 people, and this was not enough to get a comprehensive view. 

It did allow me to find out that the preferred way to present this series was through YouTube videos that were less than 10 minutes long. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pgpOYoNR92FBJuDad0sTa4pfwqwsoSyOVApWd547vMs/edit

I did get to know my audience as soon as I started creating content for socials and exploring who was engaging with the accounts. If I were to give advice about getting to know the target market, I would recommend using a socials page as one of the most efficient ways. For more details about the socials management, you can check out my social media strategy blog.

Branding 

I considered many routes for branding, but I always knew that the brand personality had to be warm and exciting to the audience. I ended up with my orange palette after some research into colour theory.

To add to this palette I created a gradient that would involve red, a colour that can mean energy and power. I thought as well as bringing some energy to the brand, it was a little bit more interesting to the eye rather than just a solid block colour.

I had considered to idea of using an mascot to represent the brand personality. It has also been shown to resonate more with audiences. Below are some notes I made when doing research into mascots.

I thought about adding some kind of animal mascot like the (penguin shown in the featured image.) This idea was eventually scrapped, because I thought it might’ve been misleading with the brand name I came up: Artist Avenues.

Coming up with a name for this brand was very difficult for me. I tried many routes pairing music words with words about progression and development for example ‘Music Upsurge’. The idea behind Artist Avenues is that there are several ways for artists to become successful in today’s world, from youtube covers to open mic nights, and the project would revolve around showcasing these routes and helping them along the journey. I also thought that the name would be quite memorable with the alliteration as well.

‘Making It’ was the name I ended up going with after speaking to someone about what the series was about “about this band and their manager trying to make it”. I considered not having a name for the series, however as I continued referring to it on socials, I realised that having a name would be much easier and recognisable for the audience.

Reflective thoughts

I was happy with my project as it was something with a clear amount of potential. After exploring social media pages relating to music business and management and having the response I did on some platforms, it became clear that the vision of my project was something that is clearly in demand.

Here are just a few of the accounts that revolve around similar content and the number of followers they have.

Accounts YouTube Music Money Makeover Show United Masters Burtismo Adam Ivy Tiktok Ari’s Take Finessed Media Passiontoolbox Abby Sarabia Instagram eli1ah Damian Keyes rebecca_bakken smartist.u	Subscribers/Followers 63.7K 50.7k 154K 280K 12.5K 11.2K 114K 13.3K 15.4K 59.6K 12.4K 15.4K

Having so many similar accounts suggested to me that there was a big market for aspiring artists and managers interested in learning about music business and industry tips. It also told me that the platforms I was using were the most viable route for a my own project.

On the other hand, it also showcased the need for a strong USP to stand apart from the others, and I think in terms of branding, I managed to carry this out.

I believe that a strength of mine across this project was creating a logo and colour palette that was bold, eye-catching and professional. I also stuck to it consistently, which has been repeatly adressed as an important tip to attract new followers.

I think this project has shown developed my skills in creating content that works is informational, eye-catching and cohesive. It taught me the differences in strategy on each platform and how to adapt content to work across them.

I think that socials pages worked well alongside the series and worked well to cross-promote the series as well. I think all around the project’s success lies around the delivery of a useful and interesting body of work.