According to the blog ‘DNVO’, DJ Kissy Sell Out “emerged from the MySpace generation of cool nerds and sonic visionaries engaged in a feverish revolt, a wholesale shredding of the musical and business rulebook, as they mix their influences into exhilarating results spreading the word online and beyond.” Thus the “online generation” is able to source influences from afar and spread its music without constraint.
In 2006 Patricia Sellers interviewed Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, founders of MySpace, for CNN’s Fortune magazine. It is interesting to see that when asked what MySpace was turning into, DeWolfe said he saw it as a “lifestyle brand.” Sellers also talked to Martin Sorrell, who heads ad giant WPP. He felt that MySpace “could be like a fashion brand. The more successful you get, the more common you become.” However DeWolfe disagreed saying “We’re not deciding what’s cool. Our users are. MySpace is all about letting people be what they want to be.”
This is the great strength of the site - anyone can be a part of it, and so many people from so many different backgrounds and cultures use it. MySpace has made significant progress in its quest to evolve into a ‘lifestyle brand’. The record label, MySpace records, started in 2006 and already has 1,356,531 friends and 11 artists on its books. However, I see MySpace as a ‘middle man’, with other record labels using the site as a resource to promote themselves. The MySpace label does have the advantage that it could (and perhaps does already) access new talent quicker than anyone else. One of the definitions of ‘lifestyle brand’ is something a user accesses every day. It is interesting that a company born from a digital site still has links to shops to buy cds and vinyl, formats which mp3’s were expected to replace. MySpace is certainly something many people check every day, and this can be described as alluring and attractive but do people desire to be associated with it? I think not. The ‘MySpace’ name is synonymous with the online community site, catering for hundreds of different labels not one.
From a blogger’s point of view Hipster Runoff observes, “the best part about being a ‘lifestyle brand’ is that you are really easy to blurb about in alternative magazines that people may or may not read/take seriously. You supply writers with multiple ‘talking points’ that they can reference in blurb-style mentions.” This enables a company to get vitally important exposure to the right audience, and in the right places such as the uber fashionable blogs Hipster Runoff, discodust and madhectic that are valued by its consumer market.
Examples of ‘lifestyle music brands’
The record labels 1234 and April77records have built their record/clothes labels as ‘lifestyle brands’ from the start. In a recent interview with The Guardian by Krissi Murison, fashionable East End label PPQ’s Amy Molyneux and Percy Parker said that they understood the “fusion of music and fashion so well that they started up the record label 1234 to release the tunes that scored their shows.” When asked what comes first creatively they said it was “a circular affair. You go out, hear music, get inspired… go home, draw, make it, wear it, inspire someone while you’re out.” Combining the two elements into their creative process allows both sides to of the label to develop naturally. In a thesis on branding in music, Asa Larsson backs this up by arguing “musical products allow consumers to buy into a lifestyle just as other brands do.”
The catwalk is an interesting place to find new music that fits a certain lifestyle brand. Murison’s article also mentions Tony Farsides. Through his work for Stella McCartney on her fashion shows, he credits himself “with breaking such acts as Santogold and MIA” on the catwalk. He confesses that with hip-hop artist Santogold, he played her music on the catwalk two years before she released a record. “Basically, she’d posted something up on MySpace about a week before I came across it. She didn’t have a record deal or anything. It was the same with MIA and Dizzee Rascal, we had both their stuff in the show before they were signed.” It is interesting to see how the three elements - MySpace, the fashion label and the musician - can work together to create the look and feel for a brand, especially on a catwalk where image and first impression is everything. At the same time, such exposure helps the artist to reach the type of audience that he wouldn’t necessarily get on MySpace.
French label April77records’ mission statement reads: “our clothing is music, and music lives in our clothes.” It describes its concept as “groundbreaking and unique.” The label promotes a different artist each month, (called a ‘custom artist’) releasing a 7” vinyl with an A and B side. Every record or item of clothing relating to a custom artist has a code that can be scratched off. The code gives access to download the two exclusive tracks from that artist or band on the website. This concept is original and deliberately aimed at a niche market - ‘old school’ vinyl has been incorporated with downloaded mp3s, ensuring both needs are satisfied. Having the downloads from its own site guarantees a constant flow of visitors to its online catalogue, and having the music to accompany the t-shirt, the consumer feels part of the brand. However, the label remains more important than the artist because the catalogue is ever changing and each month brings a different artist upon whom to focus.The lifestyle music brand combines the subculture with the label, rather than referencing existing subcultures or groups. A subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden), which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong (Wikepedia). In his book, Subculture - the meaning of style, Dick Hebdige explores “the status and meaning of revolt, the idea of style as a form of refusal”, using Jean Genet’s novel The Thiefs Journal to define ‘subculture’. Hebdige describes how the process starts with a “crime against the natural order… the cultivation of a quiff, the acquisition of a scooter or a record or a certain type of suit. In a gesture of defiance and contempt… it signals refusal.”
Ken Gelder in Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007), states six key ways to understand subcultures: 1. Through their often negative relations to work (as ‘idle’, ‘parasitic’, at play or at leisure, etc.); 2. through their negative or ambivalent relation to class (since subcultures are not ‘class-conscious’ and don't conform to traditional class definitions); 3. through their association with territory (the ‘street’, the ‘hood, the club, etc.), rather than property; 4. through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging (i.e. social groups other than the family); 5. through their stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration (with some exceptions); 6. through their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and massification.
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