Lily Allen, 25, is an English songwriter and artist. Her father is musician Keith Allen. She was mostly interested in glam rock and alternative when she began her music career. She dropped out of school, at the age of 15, and concentrated on producing music. Lily Allen finished recording, alone, several songs and then released them on her own MySpace page. Lily was recognised before she made a profile on MySpace. She was still at school and was overheard singing in the playground by Rachel Santesso who asked Lily to take up singing lessons at lunchtime in her office.
How she markets and promotes herself
· She became well known by using MySpace and other viral on the internet. She set up an account where she uploaded some demos and parts of songs. Her view count rose past tens of thousands and got signed by ‘Regal Recordings’
· Release demos and parts of songs to ‘tease’ her fans. Her song LDN was released as a 7” vinyl that was sold out almost instantly; they were being sold on for around out £40
· Free downloads of parts of songs to let the fans ‘get a taste’ of what to expect, Lily also produced two mix tapes, both of which were very successful
· Touring, she performed at the Glastonbury Festival in 2007 and 2008, she also toured America on a 14-city tour to promote her work. In 2009 she performed at Oxegen Festival, T-Mobile INmusic festival, Bestival Festival and Big Weekend Festival
· Merchandise, badges etc. are available all over the internet both fan made and official.
· Billbords and posters scattered around the country attracting people to her music, posters are on buses and on the undergrounds saying 'New Album Out Now'
· News feed to let her fans know exactly what she is doing, when the next concert is etc.
· Interactive content on her website to make people interested in her work, such as ‘Remix your own Lily album’ and her own Lily Allen online game
· She has signed up to Twitter, another easy way to inform and market herself with other people and her followers
· Blog to keep people informed and add information about herself and career
· Appearing on a TV show or hosting one. Lily Allen was the guest host on ‘The Sunday Night Project’ and also had her own chat show ‘Lily and Friends…’
How she uses the Internet to promote and market herself
Lily Allen has used the Internet dominantly to promote herself and her new material. One use of the Internet she has been using is social networking sites such as MySpace and Twitter. She has been using MySpace as her own music promotion webpage - http://www.myspace.com/lily_allen and http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic. MySpace was the first website Lily uploaded her material to, as she heard it had been successful for other artists at that time. On her MySpace profile she wrote ‘Music became a lifeline to me.’ With in a few months of uploading some of her demos online she added to her profile ‘The online support I got for my music grew quickly, then the next thrill was hearing it on the radio.’ The songs on her MySpace webpage have been downloaded approximately 19 million times, she also had at the time approximately 500,000 friends and was the most popular music artist in 2008. This massive success was spoken of in an article in OMM, she also appeared on the magazines front cover story about two months later and since then has received several awards including the 2010 Brit Award for "British Female Solo Artist". Due to this mass music impact on Lily’s life she received countless amounts of abuse so decided to shutdown her MySpace page in September 2009 and stopped social networking altogether in December. After she finished with social networking she said "The days of me making money from recording music have been and gone as far as I'm concerned" and her spokesman said, “She is not quitting pop music. She is not thinking about her next album right now because she is still in the middle of promoting her current record”. Lily then went to Twitter to keep in contact with her many fans. On 2 February 2010 Lily made several tweets to her Twitter account. Her first read, "hello, I'm back".
One other way Lily Allen has used the Internet, is her setting up her own website - http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/lily/, her website keeps fans informed on her life, shows tour dates and has a section where you are able to purchase ‘Goodies’. On this website she can promote her music and videos which have been created recently, and add quick links to purchase her new albums and play interactive games and music. Her website is designed to be fun, informative and user friendly. There are other sites dedicated to Lily Allen such as http://oh-lily.com/wp/, a fan made website for all things Lily Allen.
No comments:
Post a Comment