When discussing industry changes and practices you need to be precise - give figures, provide quotes from informed industry/academic figures, details from reports/surveys, and make a clear link into audience habits ...
This article is a good example of precisely the sort of research material you should be accessing, blogging on, and reflecting ('applying') within your evaluation (and potentially exam Q1a/1b too).
This is primarily an audience, UGC activity but as with lyric videos artists themselves, as one means of seeming to put themselves on a level with their fans (uses and gratifications), have engaged in this.
Below: James Hetfield (Lars?) unboxes a deluxe re-release - useful on multiple levels:
Here it is the full list of releases for Record Store day.
There are some big names in there including Arctic Monkeys, Arcade
Fire, Bloc party, Kasabian, The Clash and Two Door Cinema Club, Marilyn
Manson, Bombay Bicycle Club, Garbage, Noah And The Whale, A$AP Rocky,
Bat For Lashes, Belle & Sebastian, The Cure, as well as our own
Membranes who release their first single for 22 years.
Arctic Monkeys will release their new single ‘R U Mine?’ on special
purple vinyl, with a brand new B-side ‘Electricity’ accompanying the
release. Kasabian meanwhile will release their covers of Lana Del Rey’s
‘Video Games’ and Gwen Stefani’s ‘Sweet Escape’ on 7” vinyl. The Clash
will release a newly digitally remastered version of ‘London Calling’ on
vinyl. The full list is here follow the link
90s Britpoppers Suede provide a useful eg of bands reissuing repackaged versions of their albums, with bonus DVDs; this is part of the article from pitchfork.com; the full article gives complete CD/DVD listing. Suede are touring to support this release, playing a classic album each night, which links into your digipak ads in most cases...
As previously reported, reunited Britpop leading lights Suede will release expanded editions of their five studio albums in May and June, via Demon Records. Each of the records has been remastered and expanded to include B-sides, demos, and previously unreleased songs, as well booklets and bonus DVDs featuring recent interviews with the band members and more. The entire band, including once-estranged original guitarist Bernard Butler, worked on the reissue project.
The expanded edition of the band's 1993 self-titled debut is due May 30, with 1994's Dog Man Star following June 6, 1996's Coming Up out June 13, 1999's Head Music arriving June 20, and 2002's A New Morning due June 22. On Record Store Day, April 16, Suede will release a limited edition single featuring demo versions of their first single, 1992's "The Drowners" b/w "To the Birds". In addition, The Best of Suede, which came out last year in the UK, will be released digitally in the U.S. on March 22.
Over the next few months, the band will also play shows in Europe, North America, and Asia, including a set at Coachella and a couple of three-night stands where they'll play a classic album in full each night. Below, we've got the tracklists for each of the reissues, as well as the band's tour dates and their video for "The Drowners".
A few links + resources on 2 often intertwined areas of the industry: Independent record stores and vinyl records, not so long ago thought to be on the point of extinction but now making a rapid recovery from the very jaws of rigor mortis (to stretch a metaphor) on the back (...) of collectible limited releases particularly beloved by students (dance records had maintained a grip, but now rock/Indie vinyl is growing again).
The film High Fidelity (and, indeed, the UK-based Nick Hornby novel) are good places to start - you might even ask your parents (or other token 'old' people!) of their memories of buying, and playing vinyl, a much different experience than acquiring digital bits (MP3s etc). There are few stories about MP3 tracks you acquired, but I'm far from alone in having memories tied into particular tracks I bought as singles way back when!
This is one reason why I've suggested to many your ad includes a mention of a 'special edition vinyl' release.
This article centres on a new documentary about this seemingly doomed sub-culture:
Vinyl countdown: how crowdfunding helped tell the story of the last record shop in Teesside
Jeanie Finlay, a young documentarian who got the public to pay for her to make a film about life at the last record shop in Teesside, talks crowdfunding, Status Quo and David Cameron
Got any Dolly Parton? … Sound It Out. Photograph: Jeanie Finlay
You'd think the press room at the Austin convention centre would be something of a mecca for film-makers keen to flog their wares. Yet only a handful have seen fit to stick up a poster on the grey canvas walls which the people who could offer them publicity stare at for inspiration.
One of them is Jeanie Finlay, whose ingenuity in promoting her documentary about the last record shop in Teeside, an area in the north-east of England, is a natural extension of its organic conception and crowdfunded journey to the big screen. There are tie-in gigs and panel events and parties. There's endless flyers and customised earrings by Tatty Devine. Battery-powered record players came along in her luggage, so the soundtrack could be heard the way musos intended. Even the website looks charmingly homemade.
"We tried to translate that whole vibe into every aspect of the movie," explains Finlay, who persuaded 257 people to part with cash via IndieGoGo in aid of the project. They did so in three waves of fundraising: first for the shoot, then the post-production and another to get to SXSW. In return, backers get a pre-release DVD, an associate producer credit on IMDB and a whole heap of stickers. It's crowdfunding on co-operative lines, but Finlay is also canny about the marketing possibilities of such a strategy. "In the process of getting the money to make it, you're also selling the film and connecting with your audience."
That audience is likely to be sizeable. The film has been chosen as the official movie of Record Store Day, and plays out like a winning combination of High Fidelity and American Splendor. But the music itself, thinks Finlay, is a bit of a red herring. "It's about men and collecting. Whether someone's telling you about their wallpaper or their record collection what they end up telling you about is their most intimate secrets. You ask someone: 'Why is Caroline by Status Quo the anthem to your life?' and you get good answers. We have a guy in the film who works days at B&Q and spends his savings following Quo on tour. And that's fine. They've made his life better."
Finlay's next project is more conventionally backed: a BBC documentary called The Great Hip Hop Hoax. But the subject, feel and ingenuity of Sound it Out put it in the frame to be one of SXSW's surprise hits. "I don't want to say it's been a fairytale: it's a hell of a lot of work, without the cushion of cash, or a crew. But it is really exciting and liberating."
That said, she's hesitant about the idea of being a poster girl for David Cameron and his much-mocked idea of the big society. "That fills me with disgust. But I do think that thinking creatively about film-making independently is probably the only way it's going to go."
I'm sure, as you all know to keep an eye on the MusicGuardian site, you'll be familiar with this story...
Gorillaz are to start charging for The Fall, an album they released as a free download on Christmas Day. The band have announced that the record will be issued on CD and vinyl, as well as a paid download, next month. The Fall was made during Gorillaz's 2010 US tour, with Damon Albarn claiming it was recorded on an iPad. Last December, Gorillaz teased fans with details of the album via a digital advent calendar; on Christmas Day, fanclub members were provided with a link to download the LP. The album is still there, and even if you haven't joined the Gorillaz fanclub, you can stream it for free. This may be about to change. Yesterday, Gorillaz announced The Fall will be released on 180g vinyl on 16 April, International Record Store Day. A CD release will follow, as well as a paid download, on 18 April. It is not clear whether the free stream will then be taken down. Gorillaz did issue a press release, but it was scarce on details. Instead, the group's fictional frontman, 2D, offered his thoughts on the Plastic Beach follow-up. "The Fall, is mostly just me," he said, "something more gentle and just ... well ... it's just me and an iPad really mucking about ... trying out some stuff. Just looking at America and then tapping on the screen ... I'm not really concentrating too hard on it ... So, right, each album got all of us on it somewhere, but each time it's ... more of one of us than the others ... Well, that's how I see it anyway."
Here it is the full list of releases for Record Store day.
