Music videos & Genre

You can tell that her genre is pop - The close up of her face shows that the record label have found that her looks are a selling point, the use of font is also fun.
 

Indie - A niche audience and so a niche from cover, it is quite usual of indie bands not to have the artist appearing on the front cover they're marking themselves as different, saying that it's not about us, it's about the music.
 

House/dance - Both the album cover and the type of music is different, again, a niche cover appealing to a niche audience, the music itself relies on electronics therefore a cartoon looking cover fits, the artists' looks are not made to be selling point.

 

Is genre a problem?

Do artists have to behave and look a certain way? Rap - gangster but not in real life - many artists tend to act a certain way due to pressure, but they don't particularly want to.
 

Can they change image/genre or do they risk losing audience? When a band separates and they start on their own individual interests, they tend to fade into the background and start to disappear - they can lose some fans but gain a different audience from that type of music. Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus changed their image drastically but they're still popular, they had quite young fan base so the fans have had to grow with artists or the artist will just become someone they liked when they were younger. Taylor Swift switched from country to pop, she's talked about and not afraid to express her own views and opinions, people feel like they know things about her because its no longer about her music, it's the whole package.
 

Who decides on genres? Audience or industry? How does a genre start? Sometimes it's audience or band giving themselves a name and sometimes it's the industry: people like this type of music so we need to give this a name to sell it. Grime music - something different to hip hop, someone said what makes this different to hip hop, they replied well it has that grimy London feel to it.
 

Is there a difference between genre and generic? Not really, we look for particular characteristics to give a song a genre and so all songs in the same genre are similar if not the same. When something feels fresh and exciting it's genre, when it becomes popular, it become generic, we've heard it before. Arctic Monkeys exploded over night, they were found by an independent company and so big companies sent people to Sheffield and gave all bands who sounded anything like the Arctic Monkeys a record deal.