MYSPACE AND OTHER PLATFORMS

Media and promotion is a fast moving industry, people are constantly looking for new ways to engage their potential audiences and consumers. With every product, marketing is aimed specifically at the target audience. Classical music promoters will advertise products and tickets in broadsheet newspapers like The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian and classical music magazines. Pop bands would promote tickets through pre-watershed television advertising, music video channels (smash hits in particular) and girls magazines such as Sugar, Lucky and Seventeen.

My chosen group and genre are aiming at older teens and young people - the social group who are most in touch with and impressed by innovation. These bands make extensive use of modern technology to reach their target audience. Myspace has been used for a while now but new technologies Google Music, Spotify, Turntable, Soundcloud are increasingly popular. Music is accessed on the internet, via mobile phones/smart phones, computers, digital dowload etc, as well as the traditional radio and cd formats.







Bands promote themselves and their music using:

Music promos
Magazine advertising
Tv advertising - especially, but not exclusively on music channels


Flyers
Posters
Billboards
Merchandise
Touring and Festivals
New albums in record shops
TV or radio interviews (Jools Holland/Jonathon Ross/David Letterman (For America))


Myspace
Twitter
Facebook
Blogs
Emailing tasters and links to downloads
Forums
Fanclubs
YouTube
Celebrity reality shows (Strictly come dancing/I'm a Celebrity/Big Brother etc.)

Hype Machine
ReverbNation
Mobile Phone Ringtones
Promotion of new bands on the soundtrack of youth tv shows (Skins, Misfits etc.)

(PRESENTATION ON WEB 2.0 IN DIFFERENT FORMAT TO GO HERE)

DIGIPAKS

A digipak is copyrighted form of CD/DVD packaging. It is a gatefold card outer binding containing one or more plastic trays to hold the disc. Digipak has become the accepted name for this style of packaging, not just the patented. It has replaced jewel cases and they both have advantages and disadvantages. The packaging is stronger than a jewel case but the disc holder inside is more likely to crack, they are more environmentally friendly than a jewel case as they contain less plastic and there is research into using recycled materials to construct them with.

They have become more straightforward to create since the introduction of digipak i-create.












It is quite common now for classic bands (The Beatles, Nirvana, Queen etc.) to do re-issues of old albums and sell them in digipak form.

Click here to view the construction of a digipak, they are usually 4 panels (bookfold) but this example is 6.

Album packaging is a unique opportunity to market the band. Traditionally, LPs were packaged in a sleeve which had a picture of the artist on the front and a tracklisting on the back.

ANALYSIS OF MUSIC VIDEOS

My Music Video Analysis

ABOUT FOSTER THE PEOPLE

Foster The People are an Indie/Electronica band who formed in Los Angeles, California in 2009.

The lineup consists of:
Mark Foster - Lead Vocals, Keyboards, computers, programming, guitar
Cubbie Fink - Bass, Backing Vocals
Mark Pont - Drums/Percussion

The band's key single is Pumped Up Kicks, from their debut album Torches. The song had success in the UK and US, with its music video having over 20 million views to date on YouTube.

However, the song that we have chosen to use for our music video is Helena Beat which is the second single from the album. We chose Helena Beat because it was not as commercially popular as Pumped Up Kicks so we decided it would be a good one to use as we could publicise it with our own art-house style. With this approach we would have pre-concieved ideas allowing greater creative freedom.

The bands image is bright and colourful, which contrasts with most of their lyrics: Pumped Up Kicks is about the Columbine High School shootings.

The styling for their album and single digipaks is the same, with identical layout, fonts and colour (black and white with just a hint of mustard). They are in cartoon style but are quite unsettling on a second glance, which reflects the relationship between their music and lyrics as well.

PERMISSION TO USE TRACK

Copyright issues have meant that me and my group needed to get permission from the band to use their song in our music video, we used twitter to ask for their permission.

The UK Copyright Service website was helpful in explaining copyright as it applies to music.

MY PREZI ON THE CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF MUSIC VIDEOS

There are many ways that I could have presented my research into the genre but I taught myself how to use Prezi so that I could present it in more of a creative form than an essay. Prezi is a very useful new technology as it allowed me to present different aspects of my research in a dynamic and visually exciting way. It is very easy to present videos and images and also helped me to organise my material coherently by using frames.

Click HERE! to view the prezi

INSPIRATIONAL VIDEOS

I have been watching music videos for many years but stand out very well as exemplary; I could watch them again and again without getting bored. Some videos make me think long after they've finished (Ava Adore - Smashing Pumpkins), some are visually pleasing (White Stripes - Fell In Love With A Girl), some are simply so challenging that they demand further viewings (Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun).

Here are a few that I hope will influence my work:

Maccabees - Precious Time
I love the idea of using the fast sequencing that they use to move cards around and the way this amplifies the music.

Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm
More than 19 million views on YouTube so I'm not alone in loving this one. Its clashing lurid colours and fast moving, changing images cause the viewer discomfort but the whole effect is very pleasing. It has a performance element with overtones of Joy Division,  James Bond style backgrounds, scantily clad dancing girls and some voyeuristic camerawork - what's not to enjoy!