Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Social Media + Fans: Doors FB e.g.

If digitisation has produced convergence (the blurring of the lines between once distinct forms of media), it has also blurred the line between audience and producer; even fairly new terms such as use-generated content (UGC) and fan-made videos don't quite capture the extent of this. Yes, fans are producing their own mash-ups, re-edits etc for film, TV and music, but what we're also seeing is the official social media presence of many bands, large and small, using fan-published YouTube uploads to encourage interaction with the act/site/page.
Most of you will have 'liked' various bands on Facebook, and presumably observed how this works. If you think about your company blogs - and perhaps, if you've set one up (its still not too late!), your Facebook page - a key traffic-driver; aspect which might encourage people to return, is video content. Here's an example from The Doors and their Facebook updates:

This video wasn't uploaded by the band officially, but is used by the official Facebook page to generate and sustain interest in the band (whose singer died in 1971), an interesting illustration in itself of how the music industry's line on copyright is flexible when it suits them.
The point here is: what have you done to reflect this important contemporary aspect of how acts and record labels reach out to a fan base, including long-defunct acts? Have you used this stratagem to encourage visitors to your blog/site/page - and thus enhanced your prospects of gaining audience feedback? 194 comments for the e.g. above just 12 hours after posting. I've blogged on a similar theme many times - see links for Q4, and recent posts such as that on the Onslaught travel blog.

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