Here's why including a vinyl (limited) edition, as the Joy Division group did a few years back, alongside the digipak makes sense...
Sales of vinyl could hit 2m in 2015, and have now been given their own chart by the official top 40 company.
Expensive remastered vinyl packages continue to abound, especially from longer established acts. Adam Ant (huge in the early/mid 80s), for example, is currently taking one past album at a time and reissuing in vinyl as a set with plentiful unreleased material and plush packaging as part of the deal. How does £40 for a Dirk Wears White Sox package sound to you (£60 if signed)? [update, 2016: limited stock/offer, here's the main store link]
With thanks to Conal (who spotted this through Twitter and Instagram accounts/feeds linked to his joint Lady Gaga production before I heard about it through reading the Guardian report the next day!), here's a really useful resource for adding some detail to audience research.
Magazine publishers' audience profiles are more accurate, if not always so detailed as this, but the YouGov data, which takes in some major artists as well as covering a variety of media (such as newspaper readerships), is certainly worth a look.
I do question its validity/accuracy though ... are Lady Gaga fans really primarily 40/50-somethings?! The samples can be quite small ... as an Adam Ant fan, for example, I can't say as I recognised myself in the profile thrown up! (FYI YouGov, I'm not a S*n reader!)
The DVD is not for sale, but is available with a requested donation of £1 or more to cancer charity Movember for each copy; every penny received will be donated to Movember. Please contact myself, Mr Burrowes (david.burrowes at ilkleygs.ngfl.ac.uk [at = @; I don't want to be getting spammed!]), or Ilkley Grammar School; copies are held at the school reception and in the Media classroom.
NB: Most DVDs have been packaged in a slimline case
A Bit of Background on the IGS Media 2014 DVD
In June 2014 I decided to put together a 2nd feature-length film on my A-Level Media Studies students' work; in September 2014 it was finally completed, and this post takes you through what it is all about, what to expect and what specifically is included.
Click to enlarge; some info on what Movember is for
Good example of how artists are increasingly seeking to make money through merchandise through their own sites, instead of simply relying on royalty cheques from record labels (which has long been the established model, one which digitisation has abruptly changed).
The following example comes from http://www.adam-ant.net/whatsnew.html#tshirt - but was also highlighted and promoted through Facebook, receiving 178 'Likes' in just 36 mins (which acts virally: each person's FB 'friends' then get this update + announcement/hyperlink on their profile)
This is why its so important for your mag ads in particular to reflect the changing revenue streams for artists; promoting their official site/FB page etc is crucial to their financial prospects; a CD digipak may act as a tool to generate interest in tour ticket sales, merchandise and back catalogue album sales/downloads.
We had 5 tracks pitched for filming a music vid: Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine"; Mike Posner's "Cooler Than Me"; Duck Sauce's "Barbra Streisand"; a Paolo Nutini track; and Taylor Swift's "You Belong To Me". The "Barbra Streisand" track was setlled on, with planning now underway for the shoot. The official music video is embedded below (from muzu.tv, not YouTube, which I think you can access under student logins):
Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand
You'll see the design of this vid could easily inspire tribute versions, an attractive idea for most acts as this acts rather nicely as a means of generating viral marketing: marketing the band do not pay for, and which does not have the appearance of an advertising campaign. The success of the Yeo Valley (milk/dairy company) rap, (one of several similar ideas: see this Ontario vid, + rather awful raps such as this), played exclusively in the X Factor ad breaks (at a campaign cost of £5m) has worked well like this - the YouTube video has been widely emailed and the company have been 'forced' by Facebook campaigns etc to release the song as an Xmas single. The "Barbra Streisand" video also features a daft dance move, another trick which can help encourage a video to be reconstructed, reflimed and posted (eg as 'responses' to YouTube uploads) online, a tactic used as far back as Adam and the Ants' "Prince Charming" video.
