Conclusion

from this study I have found that many niche bands are marketing themselves in similar ways to mainstream bands using sites such as my space, however their music isn't as widely available as the mainstream artists. I believe that the long tail theory is correct as many factors from my research has displayed it.

Niche Genre - Pop Punk

when I searched for pop punk on a online search engine wikipedia brought up a list of pop punk bands and about.com brought up a list of the top ten pop punk albums. However I could not find any bands that are specifically dedicated to the genre or online directories. Pop punk has become popular in the past few years and I found that the more mainstream artists were available on download sites such as Itunes however the many niche bands that populate this genre had limited supplies of artists. I searched the genre on amazon and found 66,287 mp3 downloads and 17,379 music Cd's. I then searched the genre on ukrecordstore and found that it brought up albums and singles with either word in the title, none of which were albums of the genre. When you search on facebook and myspace "pop punk" it shows you bands which have put pop punk in their name and as a genre. An example of a Major pop punk band is the Mainstream study I have done on this case as few artists in the pop punk genre become major, they are usually brought to the attention of a mainstream audience.

Gym Class Heroes - Downloads

I have looked on websites such as Amazon, play.com and Itunes looking for gym class heroes music and found that all of their albums and individual songs are available on both of these websites with prices varying from 69p a track on amazon, 70p a track on play.com and the highest prices from itunes which was 99p a track. I then looked at the cost of their albums on these sites and found despite them all offering all of their albums their latest album "the Quilt" was available from £4.98 on amazon to £9.95 on play and £7.99 on itunes which was confusing when I compared this to Their first album "the papercut chronicles" which was being sold for £7.99 on both amazon and Itunes and £9.95 on play.com

Gym Class Heroes - Record labels

Gym class heroes are currently owned by fueled by ramen and Decaydance Records which began as an imprint of fueled by ramen but is now an independant record label. These record labels also have artists such as Paramore and Fall out boy signed to them aswell as unknown bands that they aim to get into the mainstream industry. Fueled by ramen are part of atlantic records which is part of warner music group.

after looking on fueled by ramens website (http://www.fueledbyramen.com) I have found that gym class heroes aswell as many other signed artists are promoted by listings of which bands are on tour and how many shows they have left aswell as links to buy albums and merchandise aswell as news on each band. they also offer you the service of being texted updates on the shows their bands are playing and linking you to their own facebook, twitter and tumblr pages.

Gym class Heroes Facebook & Myspace

Gym class heroes has several facebook fan pages and an official facebook page on http://www.facebook.com/gymclassheroes?v=app_5179614317 with regular news and information on the band aswell as new gigs that they have been booked for and general information about the bands label and management information. The bands myspace page is on http://www.myspace.com/gymclassheroes and has many of the same features as their official website. The myspace page promotes their latest album "The Quilt" and also promotes their merchandise and music videos making it available to buy the videos on itunes. The site also has videos of their most recent released songs.

Gym class heroes - Official Website

After looking at the Bands website - http://gymclassheroes.com/ I have noticed that they are very well marketed and their website includes adverts to buy their music on Itunes, a merchandise website links for both uk and the usa. The website also includes a list of their gigs and news about the band. The band also updates their website with photos and videos from their latest tour and has a twitter feed that is updated regularly.

Introduction

For this case study I will be looking at Gym class heroes as a mainstream band and Pop Punk as a niche genre.