The Music Industry

Audience – Mass and Niche – where do you lie?

Standard

It is key that you mention audience in your essays.

Consider who they are in the music industry and start to use the terms – core or niche.

  • Core – the big mass audiences who worldwide consume music – usually pop.
  • Niche – those smaller, more particular audiences who consume sub-genres or follow specific smaller bands.

The Conglomerates will target the Mass/Core audiences.

The Indies are more focused on organic talent and appeasing their more discerning customers.

Where do you fall in this ‘broad’ and slightly naive audience segmentation?

One of the questions might be about audience behaviour so you must be able to talk about your own experiences of consuming and making music (if appropriate) and how you are ‘typical’ of the average music listener nowadays. It might be easier to adopt an approach that shows how you are easily consumed, attracted by the Big 3 to their marketing, image focused approach but also that you enjoy finding, following and listening to less synthetically produced material in the form of indie artists and can much more easily find this type of music because of Digital Technology and more importantly, they can more easily find you!

 

Converged Technology Essay Plan

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‘How important is technological convergence for institutions and audiences in a media area you have studied?’ (June 09)

Essay Mind Map

Essay Structure. Must be an essay of two halves:

Audience

  • Creates greater accessibility (any time, any place access)
  • Gives the audience much more power to participate in media communities based around music
    • Prosumers (Simultaneously Producers of the Media and Consumers)
    • Interaction with media and marketing materials
    • The audience (fan power) can drive popularity and can make stars without the help of traditional media institutions
  • Communication and sharing is enabled
    • Link into social media – spread the message (going viral)
  • Gives rise to piracy, which has devalued music as a commodity

Institutions

  • Enables institutions to get their message to the audience through lots of different channels
    • Bespoke marketing to micro targeted audience
  • Conglomerates can use converges tech to push their own products on lots of different platforms
    • Audience can be bombarded with the message
  • Websites can act as a hub for artists and can bring (AIDA) together in one place

Best Marketing Campaigns and Cross Media Convergence/Synergy

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These are just a few ideas to use for case studies for exciting and innovative ways artists have managed to use marketing to raise their profile.  They are completely up to date so should be valued case studies for the essay.  The template for analysing the case studies is on classroom. If every student does one story then you will have a lovely library of examples to choose from.

 

And a quick reminder of how advertising works best.  Integrating various platforms and channels is how you can saturate the market with your image and ideologies.

Music Industry Case Studies

Standard

In order to write a response to the Music Industry question in the Audience and Institution section of Component 2, you must include the usual TEAS structure.

Terms – those terms to do with the music industry – you have learnt so far: production, distribution, marketing, exchange, exhibition, download, viral marketing, pluggers, managers, agents, record, labels, conglomerates, labels, The Big 3, digital technology etc.

Analysis/Significance – relating the examples to the question and how they might evidence, support or not, the question.

Examples: Case Studies…

…as young people you already have a number of case studies you could use from your own experience of the music industry; you all stream, download, go to festivals, watch music videos, belong to fan sites and follow etc. Some of you might also make music too.

But you need more than just that – you will need a range of up to date and specific case studies to help craft your argued response to the question.

We will be studying in depth one of the Big 3 and also an indie record label but we will also be expecting you to have some ‘scatter gun’ case studies you can call upon.

Music Industry case study power point i

  • Each class will have their own copy in classroom.
  • You will be allocated a story – you must read it – digest it and then
  • In no more than 5 bullet points – summarise the main points of the article – stats, facts and its significance to either PDME.
  • You will then share your story with the class.

The Music Industry – Ownership

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The Big Three – AKA The Major Labels

The Big 3 labels are dominant players in the music industry.

They are in turn owned by massive media conglomerates.

But, what is a conglomerate?

Slide show on conglomerate in classroom

So, what does a record label actually do?

And who are the Indies?

This article outlines some of the best indie record labels on the scene.  Click on the arrow on the right of the photo to see who the label is.

Creative Critical Reflection 2

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How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

Task:

  • Video directors commentary on all three products with particular reference to star image & brand values.

You are working in your production group to prepare the video for this but you must contribute equally to the voice over and introduce yourself when speaking. You make some bullet point prompts together, but you must be able to verbalise and explain these concepts & how they apply yourself!

Preparing the video for the commentary.

  1. Create a new Premiere project and import the .mp4 file you exported as your final draft for your music video.
  2. Drop the video into ‘sequence one’ timeline, ‘Unlink’ the sound (A1) from the  video (V1)
    1. You will either delete the sound channel completely or…
    2. …fade the music in and out over the commentary.
  3. Record a commentary explaining the brand image you have communicated in your video, digipack and website.
    1. The emphasis in this voiceover should be how the three products are…visually, thematically, aesthetically, generically, institutionally & ideologically linked into your BRAND or STAR IMAGE!
  4. You must use media terminology to describe production techniques and you used and should also use some terms relevant theory / concepts that you have learnt during the course; e.g:
    • Theory of the Active Audience: preferred / negotiated / oppositional reading (Hall)
    • Stars Image, Ideology & the Metanarrative (Dyer)
    • Semiotics & Structuralism (Barthes)
    • Narrative: Structure, themes, chronology, positioning: (Propp / Todorov, Strauss)
    • Genre: conventions (blueprint), predictable pleasure (contract) & marketing (label) (Altman)
  5. Drop in a jpeg of each pane of your digipack and screen grabs from your web site in place of, (or over) the existing footage.
    1. This means you might have a full screen image or you might layer up the images over the video in V2. This is will be where you are discussing those the specific links between the products and what you were trying to achieve.

Guidance

Please answer the following questions in your voice-over:

  1. How do the products reflect the star image & ideology of the artist?
    • Theorist – Dyer
    • Terms: Star image, Brand, Meta-narrative.
  2. How are the products designed to create a coherent brand identity?
    • Theorist – Blumler & Katz
      • Terms: Social Interaction, Information, Personal Identity & Entertainment
    • Theorist – Hall 
      • Terms: Active audience, preferred reading, ideology
  3. How does design of the digipack and website fit with the video?
    • Theorist Barthes
      • Terms: Signifies, encode, decode, cultural, symbolic, semic…code
  4. What are the institutional/business purposes behind the 3 products?
    • Theorist – Altman
      • Terms: Predictable pleasure, contract. Similar different. Marketing. Fans. Call to Action.

You may, of course, discuss other links and relationships; you should however try to show how there is a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship between the three products and how this is achieved. 

Whilst your DP and Advert will not be directly linked to the actual song in the music video, you must focus on the links between them regarding visual style, genre, star image, representation, ideology and brand packaging of the performer, which will be the same.

Notes for Directors Commentary

Structure of the commentary: Timeline Map

Essential theories – recap:

You will need to plan some bullet points for a script of this voiceover, but you must not read it out word for word! It feel like a well informed discussion between you and your partner/s.  Plan the script first and then divide it up between the group – ensuring you have covered the main theorists and links to be discussed (see above). Once you have the script, you can think about the visuals that you need.

Examples:

 

Examiners hints from the last few years:

Creative Critical Reflection 3 – The Vlog

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How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?

After you have completed your reading and research and compiled some good ideas about audience engagement and distribution, respond directly to the following questions in your vlog:

Part 1 – Target Audience

  • Who are your target audience?
    • What are their ideologies? (demographics, psychographics, audience segmentation eg tribe wired etc)
  • What is your brand identity / missions statement? (genre, star image)
  • How does the design / content of your three products fulfil your audience’s uses and gratification (Blumler and Katz but you don’t need to reference them directly – just use the terms)?
  • How do the products speak to the audience and try to create a relationship with them? (AIDA, B + K, genre, star image, Hall)

Theory / terminology:

  • Hall (audience – encode, decode, ideology, demographics, psychographics, preferred reading, negotiated reading, oppositional reading)
  • Dyer (star image – metanarrative, ordinary, paradox of the star, extraordinary, present, absent)
  • Blumler + Katz (personal identity, social interaction, information, entertainment)
  • Lacey (predictable pleasure, repertoire of elements, contract, blueprint, label, conventions)

Distribution and Marketing

  • Which record label would suit your star / brand?
  • What marketing strategies would you use to create buzz around your album launch?
  • How would you reach your target audience?
  • How are you likely to make your star / album profitable?

Theory / terminology:

  • target audience, budget, distribution, marketing, social media, download, streaming, guerilla marketing, personal appearances, live performance, festivals, press releases, advertising, online, viral marketing, profile, independent, major record label. Read the blog posts to get some ideas.

USE THE FOLLOWING CLIPS TO INTRODUCE YOUR VLOG and EDIT ON WEVIDEO

  • APPRENTICE INTRO AT THE START AND CUT TO YOUR VLOG.
  • APPRENTICE OUTRO AT THE END OF YOUR VLOG.