Website Analysis

The most important element of a Musician's website is their Star image and the name associated to it, the band/ artist's name being the key element to recognition and branding. Therefore emphasis is taken on the name it self, it can be turned into a logo accompanied by a motif or symbol which my represent the band or the upcoming music theme. So for the analysis we'll be looking at, Marina, Beach house, Foster the people, and okaykaya's websites. All of them fall under the indie pop genre category.

Starting with logos:

3 of the 4 artists have prominent name logos presented on the websites, Okay kaya does not have a distinctive logo present on her website and the website introduces us to her music video auto playing on silent of her song Durer that establishes her face as her star image. more on music video display later on in this post.

Navigation Bars:

Navigation bars allow the viewers to quickly access the desired information form the website. they were either be presented as top tabs (Marina's website) side bar tabs (Beach house) or hidden to to lower corner (Okay Kaya). Each of these serve a purpose to the website's layout and desired aesthetic wanting to be achieved. The Beach house website is very minimalistic with its all black background presentation so all the attention is diverted to the tabs for navigation. Okay Kaya's navigation bar is more hidden to aid to the simple open and large presentation of the website which encourages you to scroll down at first and discover the artist. Marina being a more well known artist allows a conventional and more informative approach as well as presenting her new music with a large music video embedded on the front page.

Social Media Links:

All websites provide social media links which is essential for marketing and self promotion. other than social media, streaming links are also provided to online streaming platforms for the music to be heard or reviewed. This can also include YouTube Music video links presented in its own category.

Music Video Slide shows:

Photo galleries or Music video galleries can be presented to show off an artist's style on all the singles they've worked on. This can provide a easy collective viewing experience. In a way it can also be linked with Youtube or Vimeo as social media accounts.

This is a form of Album Promotion That Beach House gave their Album "7" its own Website which is basically a large slide of all their abstract Music videos playing. (Linked here)

News and Updates:

Focusing mainly on Marina and Foster the People because as of writing this post they are the only artists out of this selection who have released or plan on releasing new music. it is basically providing information and navigation to find and purchasing the new music. In other words its Album Promotion.

Before even entering on the front page of Marina's website we are presented with a large notification of her new upcoming album which is planned on being released later in April. It gives us the option to further investigate and pre-order the album. (this can linked into merchandising as well)

Though not shown or written explicitly but "Style" by FTP is their newest single released on the 22nd of march 2019. The website is styled after the cover art of the single.

Tour dates:

tour dates are often provided for all the upcoming shows the artist will perform on their on exclusive tour or Festivals they plan on playing at. Ticket purchase options are often given for convenience.

Marina's upcoming album promotion tour (UK)

Beach house's Tour list

 Tour lists can also be divided into regions they'll be visiting, most prominently the European Tour dates and The Americas Tour dates.

okay kaya's 2018 selective live performances

 Discography:

Discography includes the listing of previous albums that the artist has put out, it can be either previous themes, tracklists of albums or lyrics.

Marina provides a informative back up to her past "eras" looking into all her themes while also providing links to that music

BH provides all the lyrics to all their previous studio albums and EPs

A tracklist presented by Okay kaya

Store:

A store provides a method to collect extra revenue by selling merchandise and apparel themed after the artist's album or Star Image. These stores can either be combined on the main website or be present as individual website often times supported by third party merchandise store websites and providers.

The merchandise can range from selling the album itself to accessories. Sometimes Promotional bundles such as the ones seen on Marina's website are made to increase the incentive for purchases by giving a small price cut on multiple items that if bought separately would be more expensive .

Contact:

I've concluded that most smaller artists provide their contact information of their management in order to organize future shows and bookings. Bigger more mainstream artists like FTP and Marina do not have their PR management details openly given out on their website. the closest thing to contact is their social media links and a newsletter sign up.

Ok kaya's Management details

House Style:

A website's house style is usually based of the current new released music. The album cover acts as a mascot of some sorts and provides inspiration when decorating the website with a certain colour scheme, type of fonts and design.

By scrolling through these websites (expect Okay Kaya's) and comparing them with the newest released music and it's cover art we can draw parallels and similarities of themes. The Album/Single covers given below for Reference:

BEACH HOUSE "7" (album)

Marine - Love + Fear (album)

Foster the people "Style" (single)

Mahnoor conducted this thorough investigation into websites so we as team could later plan what we wanted our website to look like. She informed us about the codes and conventions and as a unit we went forth in the creation of our products.