Alex Clare's promotion

As he is signed to Island Records, it means that Alex Clare is consequently signed to Universal Music Group, one of the conglomerates. The internet is the home to modern promotion and like all artists, Clare takes advantage of this and makes the most of the internet to promote his music and himself as an artist.

He has his own website which provides fans and other visitors with access to things about him, such as a biography of him, news about him and his music videos . The videos section also has 'Extras' such as Alex Clare performing covers of other artists' music and a video titled 'Alex Clare goes busking.' This video of Clare performing in the in the streets was made during his German tour in the city of Köln. Alongside music videos (which may promote tours), tours are the artist's main choice of promoting himself. However, he decides to bravely busk in a foreign city here, this also promotes Alex Clare to an international audience.

The comments section of the video on Clare's site allows fans to express their view on him and it also promotes the artist because the Facebook friends of each commenter can see the comment. There are over 70 comments here for this video on Alex Clare's site. Now on average, a person has around 200 Facebook friends. Now imagine how many NEW people would potentially know about the artist JUST from a few comments! Notice that two of the comments above are in German and another fan even mentions they're all the way from Brazil. Such is the promotion power and influence of conglomerates and modern technology such as the internet, people all over the world have instant access to Alex Clare's music 

Also, the fact that this performance was uploaded to YouTube, a popular global site is a promotion itself. As seen below, the video description is in English as well as German so it attracts a wide audience who speak either language. The description further promotes him by displaying a link to his official site as well as the link to iTunes to purchase his music. Finally, there are other music videos of Alex Clare on the side, which would allow the audience to listen to different songs by the artist and they may take a liking to him and become a regular listener. 

His website provides a direct link to his most recent work, a song called 'Not Giving In', where Clare has collaborated with John Newman and  fellow up and coming Londoners Rudimental.

One of the key features of Alex Clare's promotion, which is on the homepage of his website, is the list of his most recent upcoming tours. Again, the use of social networking is key because it promotes the artist to a global audience and it allows the fans to share the information with all their friends with no effort, just the click of a button.

 

As the use of social networking sites such as Facebook has become synonymous with online promotion, there is an option on Alex Clare's website that allows people to 'like' his official Facebook page, without even logging in. As you can see, it displays just a few of the 188,728 people who are a part of the Alex Clare Facebook community; this encourages interaction between the public who like the same artist and may have similar interests. 

Alex Clare's official Facebok page which also lets people listen to the song and promotes the artist and his music by providing a link to where the song or album can be downloaded from.

As previously mentioned, the artist Alex Clare is signed to a sister label of Universal. One of Universal's most successful and famous artist is rapper Dr Dre. Clare's website promotes Dr Dre Beats, a range of headphones that the public can buy. This shows that websites are a valuable market in promoting not only the artists but their label, other artists from the same label and products.

Finally, here's a picture from Alex Clare's personal Twitter page. This is one of the most significant elements of promotion for many reasons; it allows fans to keep up to date almost minute by minute of the artist's activities and whereabouts, it is global so everyone can follow him. Also it allows some level of interaction between the fans and the Alex Clare. For example, he may tweet to promote a new upcoming single; this will now be seen by all his followers (over 37, 000) as well as hundreds of thousands of other due to the re-tweeting feature of Twitter.

In my brief journey into the promotional world of Alex Clare, I have developed further knowledge of the significance of the internet as the most influential promotion/advertising tool. Without it, it would be very difficult for musicians to get themselves known because they would not be able to reach a big global audience.