REPRESENTATION Styles can bi me love

Great read about how millennials more liberal attitude to sexuality is being reflected in very mainstream pop and especially a dose of bisexual lyrical themes by the likes of ex-1D Harry Styles.

Bi bi baby bye bye as a tabloid editor might quip.

This is what the uses and gratifications theory was getting at, and why governments subsidise arthouse movies - representation, seeing yourself on screen, matters.

Two directions: why Harry Styles' new song is a breakthrough for bisexual music fans https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/22/both-directions-why-harry-styles-new-song-is-a-breakthrough-for-bisexual-music-fans?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

MUSIC INDUSTRY 2018 some pointers

This is a quick post inspired by encountering the site musicbusinessworldwide.com

UPDATE: Useful review of music video trends in 2918, including the return of mega-budgets for a handful of elite artists:

Drake’s mates and Taylor Swift’s cosplay: exploring the 2018 music video

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/19/drakes-mates-and-taylor-swifts-cosplay-exploring-the-2018-music-video?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

I was looking for some info on the 1D GCSE exam case study but spotted a number of great articles on here. So here's a few pointers based on the site.

You can find a bullet list I previously did summing up some key music industry points (with many links to posts) here.

AS CDS DISAPPEAR TOURS ARE JUST THE TICKET: 1D EXAMPLE
A point I make many, many times: the traditional music industry model has been through disruption from digitisation (though it hasn't rebalanced the competition in favour of Indies; see Anita Elberse's fascinating analysis of how big 3 acts utterly dominate Amazon sales, making the 'long tail theory' seem absurd), so labels are looking for new revenue sources. Merchandise is a key factor - when I went to see The Wedding Present (UK Indie band) in Luxembourg last year, I got to chat to the singer after the gig, who was at the merch stall signing his own comic book range alongside the usual tee-shirts etc.

The likes of 1D aren't going to do that. They did sell VIP packages for gigs - something else I saw at a Depeche Mode gig, with multiple tiers including a basic that simply allowed you into the venue earlier to hear the soundcheck. I've blogged on Taylor Swift and Katy b Perry doing this, with fans paying a lot for a selfie opportunity. [meet-and-greets post]

The basic breakdown is clear though - most major artists (Indies too) will gain more from tours than album sales. Even combined with streaming (which is now bigger than physical sales and download sales combined) that remains the case. Getting onto TV ads, film/game OSTs are also potentially lucrative.

WEBSITE Doors bundle t-shirts and vinyl with Light My Fire re-release

IN THIS POST: Discussion of a heritage (60s/70s) band's use of merchandise and social media; analysis of their website including detailed denotation of the features, with screenshots, and a look at their social media integration and audience interaction (or lack of...).

This isn't The Doors' main website (though that is linked, and everything here IS featured and sold through their website too), but an online retailer that sells their merchandise, and markets this (I came across this via a Facebook update of the official Doors page, screenshot below the line). 

This is a further sign or evidence of the re-emergence of vinyl, plus the centrality of merchandise (especially when touring isn't an option) to monetise music.

below - analysis on assessing target audience (core/primary and secondary) + more images + detailed analysis of their website...

Sony CEO: Social Media drives music biz today

Sony's CEO says in an interview for the CBI's magazine that One Direction have shown him that social ('new) media are now more important than the traditional ('old') media. Sony used UGC, such as fan campaigns to get One Direction to play a gig near them ("Bring 1D To Me"), to build up buzz and a following for One Direction before any material was released to radio stations, traditionally the key to breaking any band.

Gatfield says this has completely changed the dynamic of launching an act, enabling music companies to bypass the traditional radio-station gatekeepers.
“Traditionally you’d have to persuade radio to support it and there’d be a long, hard slog while you built up the support and marketed them on the back of airplay,” he says. “This is the other way round: you market them and then airplay is the accelerator.”

He goes so far as to say that Sony wouldn't now consider signing a band that didn't already have social media profiles up and running.

Article Source.

One Direction: Social media made them a global phenomenon, says Sony CEO

One Direction have become a $50m business thanks to their army of fans across the world - and this is just the start, according to Nick Gatfield

15th February 2013
This article appeared in the December edition of Business Voice, the CBI magazine

'Their live business is through the roof. I haven’t seen anything this big in my entire career on a global level.'
- Nick Gatfield

To understand the transformative effect of social media on how music labels market their acts, look no further than the success of One Direction.
The boy band, who are signed to the Syco label, came third in The X-Factor TV show in 2010. Since then they have won a Brit award recognising their worldwide success and become a $50m business – with Sony Music UK CEO and chairman Nick Gatfield predicting that this will double in 2013.

Nick Gatfield: X-Factor made us complacent >>

“They are a global phenomenon,” he says. “Their live business is through the roof. I haven’t seen anything this big in my entire career on a global level.
"You can get that kind of explosive moment if you galvanise young music fans and find something they want to engage with – it goes worldwide incredibly quickly. That’s the beauty of social media and the internet: we sign locally but we market globally from day one. That’s a fundamental change in our business.”
By acting on pockets of support for the band that emerged online in places from Sweden and Italy to Australia and Canada, the company built support for the band before they’d had any airtime on the radio. This was particularly important in the US – an impossible nut to crack for British pop bands for more than 20 years.
Sony Music’s US division picked up on a campaign called “Bring 1D to me”, originally developed in the UK, which encouraged fans to pitch for the band 
to play in their area. As a result, What Makes You Beautiful, their first single available to buy on iTunes in the US, sold 130,000 copies in a week and entered the top ten without any airplay.
Gatfield says this has completely changed the dynamic of launching an act, enabling music companies to bypass the traditional radio-station gatekeepers.
“Traditionally you’d have to persuade radio to support it and there’d be a long, hard slog while you built up the support and marketed them on the back of airplay,” he says. “This is the other way round: you market them and then airplay is the accelerator.”
He adds that he would be loathe to sign an act that had no social media profile. “All that would say to me was that they hadn’t got sufficient wherewithal or drive.”

Hysterical teen girl fans meme: Beatlemania to Beliebers + 1D

Lynskey considers psychological studies + historical comparisons

A brief one, but a post worth reading through as you seek to carefully consider the nature of audience, and the interaction between representations encoded by video producers and a fanbase.

Here's a sample from a lengthy article examining the history of the meme of hysterical - typically female - pop fans, with Beatlemania and today's Beliebers obvious examples (media coverage of the threats issued to any 1D 'haters' via social media also reflects this - scroll to bottom for examples):

Teenage girl fans are still patronised by the press today. As Grant says, "Teenage girls are perceived as a mindless horde: one huge, undifferentiated emerging hormone." In an influential 1992 essay, Fandom as Pathology, US academic Joli Jensen observed: "Fandom is seen as a psychological symptom of a presumed social dysfunction… Once fans are characterised as a deviant, they can be treated as disreputable, even dangerous 'others'."
"Lots of different fans are seen as strange," says Dr Ruth Deller, principal lecturer in media and communications at Sheffield Hallam University, who writes extensively about fan behaviour. "Some of that has to do with class: different pursuits are seen as more culturally valuable than others. Some of it has to do with gender. There's a whole range of cultural prejudices. One thing our society seems to value is moderation. Fandom represents excess and is therefore seen as negative."

Dorian Lynskey's article goes on to flag up that such behaviour - and the negative coverage of this - goes back much further than the Beatles in the 1960s:

There's only two One Directions

Edited within an impressively tight timeframe, here are the two edits of the IGSMedia remake/pastiche of the 1D hit One Thing - the original video is embedded within an earlier post.

Enjoyed these? Why not try the Britney remake, and sample a wide range of other videos at the IGSMediaStudies YouTube channel!!!

2013 Remake Challenge: 1D's One Thing

My ears look forward to this as much as a sharp stick being poked through them, but here we go with a 2013 vid remake challenge. Students pitched a multitude of interesting ideas, from Rebecca Black's advert for earplugs, Friday, to Olivia Newton-John's Grease, but a consensus was reached around this aural atrocity...

Not sure how the open-top bus will be managed (a matchbox toy? car-trailer? cardboard cutout?), and I've a sinking feeling I've figured out who 'Zayn' is and why there was an optimistic call for yours truly to play him, but we start with meticulous denotation of the original.
It helps to have UGC/fan-made vids like this:

It also helps that YouTube have signed deals with most of the major labels (and many Indies) to ensure such vids can be exhibited through their site!
We'll carry out meticulous denotation using note sheets like those pictured below.

Sony CEO: social media more important than radio

Sony's CEO says in an interview for the CBI's magazine that One Direction have shown him that social ('new) media are now more important than the traditional ('old') media. Sony used UGC, such as fan campaigns to get One Direction to play a gig near them ("Bring 1D To Me"), to build up buzz and a following for One Direction before any material was released to radio stations, traditionally the key to breaking any band.

Gatfield says this has completely changed the dynamic of launching an act, enabling music companies to bypass the traditional radio-station gatekeepers.
“Traditionally you’d have to persuade radio to support it and there’d be a long, hard slog while you built up the support and marketed them on the back of airplay,” he says. “This is the other way round: you market them and then airplay is the accelerator.”

He goes so far as to say that Sony wouldn't now consider signing a band that didn't already have social media profiles up and running.

Article Source.

One Direction: Social media made them a global phenomenon, says Sony CEO

One Direction have become a $50m business thanks to their army of fans across the world - and this is just the start, according to Nick Gatfield

15th February 2013
This article appeared in the December edition of Business Voice, the CBI magazine

'Their live business is through the roof. I haven’t seen anything this big in my entire career on a global level.'
- Nick Gatfield

To understand the transformative effect of social media on how music labels market their acts, look no further than the success of One Direction.
The boy band, who are signed to the Syco label, came third in The X-Factor TV show in 2010. Since then they have won a Brit award recognising their worldwide success and become a $50m business – with Sony Music UK CEO and chairman Nick Gatfield predicting that this will double in 2013.

Nick Gatfield: X-Factor made us complacent >>

“They are a global phenomenon,” he says. “Their live business is through the roof. I haven’t seen anything this big in my entire career on a global level.
"You can get that kind of explosive moment if you galvanise young music fans and find something they want to engage with – it goes worldwide incredibly quickly. That’s the beauty of social media and the internet: we sign locally but we market globally from day one. That’s a fundamental change in our business.”
By acting on pockets of support for the band that emerged online in places from Sweden and Italy to Australia and Canada, the company built support for the band before they’d had any airtime on the radio. This was particularly important in the US – an impossible nut to crack for British pop bands for more than 20 years.
Sony Music’s US division picked up on a campaign called “Bring 1D to me”, originally developed in the UK, which encouraged fans to pitch for the band 
to play in their area. As a result, What Makes You Beautiful, their first single available to buy on iTunes in the US, sold 130,000 copies in a week and entered the top ten without any airplay.
Gatfield says this has completely changed the dynamic of launching an act, enabling music companies to bypass the traditional radio-station gatekeepers.
“Traditionally you’d have to persuade radio to support it and there’d be a long, hard slog while you built up the support and marketed them on the back of airplay,” he says. “This is the other way round: you market them and then airplay is the accelerator.”
He adds that he would be loathe to sign an act that had no social media profile. “All that would say to me was that they hadn’t got sufficient wherewithal or drive.”