SOCIAL MEDIA WEB 2.0 Slipknot Guns mask Facebook filters

https://www.metalsucks.net/2019/07/31/breaking-facebook-introduces-slipknot-guns-n-roses-filters/

STANNING the dark side of queer fandom of female artists

'They just wanted to silence her': the dark side of gay stan culture.

UGC viral fan-made photos making minions

Just as with film, the notion that a producer churns out a text that is then passively consumed by an audience is clearly no longer the case in the music industry either. Artists feel great pressure to be heavily involved in some variety of social media to sustain interest (though there's certainly an argument that this eventually undermines interest as mystique wanes).

You will most likely have seen your own variations of the following - paste in links as comments and I'll add them...



See below for images

AUDIENCE CONVERGENCE Carly Rae Jepson controlled by audience emoticons

 

This is nothing new - I blogged on interactive videos at least a couple of years back - but it is a high profile, mainstream example with the considerable muscle of Universal Music behind it.

AUDIENCE INTERACTION Stepping into the world of Little Monsters

Through recently reviewing the Lady Gaga US and UK websites I went through the process of applying to become a Little Monster, allowed to enter the hallowed cyberhall of intelladytual conversation.

It truly is a slightly weird moment in life to get two emails informing me that, after reflection and consideration, I'm in ... I'm a Little Monster.

I've no intention of being snotty or patronising about those who take this all very ... very seriously indeed. Each to their own, and there is a strong emotional attachment between much of Gaga's fanbase - not just to/with the star, but with each other as well, a sub-culture that deserves study just as Hebdige (a pioneer of the notion of sub-cultures as a concept and subject for study) did with punk. Gaga herself expends considerable effort on interacting with and encouraging her Little Monsters ... though I have a wee doubt as whether it was Gaga herself (Herself? I don't know the LM rules!) who wrote and sent this email ...

Thanks though ... and I'll try to be brave!

Below - screenshots and some analysis of this phenomenon...

WEB 2.0 MARKETING Britney Spears mints new marketing concept

The small scale of this clearly indicates a reliance on media coverage and social media sharing to be an effective campaign, which it seems to have achieved.

Pretty Girls – a new Britney Spears song featuring Iggy Azalea – premiered on Sunday, and who nabbed the world’s first listen? Not radio, not even online, but a handful of Uber cab riders.

A limited number of Britney-branded SUVs decorated in black and yellow bee print drove around Los Angeles at the request of fans, who could book the cars for up to 30 minutes to hear the song.

Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea marked a duet single by premiering the track through branded Uber taxis, requiring a 30 minute booking (30 minutes of Spears singing - I know taxi journeys can be torture but come on!).

Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea debut new track Pretty Girls to Uber riders.

 

Turns out that without a more traditional promo campaign, including TV appearances (there was a music video), it wasn't terribly successful, leading to a bit of a twitter flame war between the two.

Pretty Girls throw shade: Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea clash over 'flop'.

Only, no there wasn't, actually, it was the media inventing beef and wanting only to sexualise the pair's relationship, apparently ...

Iggy Azalea criticises press for stirring row with Britney Spears.

UGC Azealia Banks Google tie-in stars audience

Its something I'll say frequently, and design 'spin-off' exercises around, because it is simply so important to the music industry's modern approach to promotion in the web 2.0 era: involving the 'audience' in the promo materials, and blurring the audience/producer line.

Details/link below

Interactive videos - Dylan, Queens of Stone Age etc

There are screenshots/links below to several egs of interactive vids: QoTSA, Death Grips, Bob Dylan etc

Writing in The Guardian's Music Blog, Harriet Gibsone reports on a new phenomenon, one which takes the postmodern/web 2.0 notion I often raise, the blurring (at least) of the producer/audience divide, on to a new level:

His video for Subterranean Homesick Blues may have unwittingly pre-empted the lyric video by 50 years, but Bob Dylan's telly-hopping interactive video looks like it could be another first of a kind.
With Like a Rolling Stone as its soundbed, the player allows its audience to flick through a range of fake television channels, each of which features different characters lip-synching the words to the 1965 classic. "I'm using the medium of television to look back right at us," director Vania Heymann told Mashable.
While Dylan's new video feels like an inventive way to breathe new life into an old tune, other artists are using the format to make a quick online buzz: in the past week alone we've seen interactive videos from Queens of the Stone Age, who are at the end of their album campaign, and Bombay Bicycle Club, who happen to be at the very start.

Here's a screenshot from the Dylan site, where I've 'switched channels' to a shopping channel:

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.

DIGITISATION: fan footage 4 Pantera vid

Look at http://panteramusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/ and you'll see a form asking for fans of the band Pantera to submit footage of themselves moshing to Pantera for possible inclusion in a new Pantera vid.
The line between UGC (user-generated content, aka fan-made videos) and official but crowd-sourced (think of how Radiohead got fans to submit their footage of a Prague gig which was then edited into an official full-length concert DVD) is getting razor thin...

Lady Gaga shows ideological power of pop

An example here of the influence pop (in the widest sense of popular music) can wield, and why we should never mistake even the dumbest, oh, Katy Perry vid for example as being without potential to influence a culture.

Lady Gaga to meet with Obama over bullying

Singer plans to discuss anti-bullying legislation with president following fan's suicide

Sean Michaels 23.9.11 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/23/lady-gaga-obama-bullying

Lady Gaga … 'Our generation has the power to end bullying.'




Lady Gaga has announced she is to meet Barack Obama to discuss new legislation to counteract bullying. Following the recent suicide of a 14-year-old fan, Jamey Rodemeyer, a victim of bullies, the singer called on American lawmakers to make bullying illegal. Bullying, she tweeted, is a "hate crime".
"I am meeting with our president," Gaga declared on Twitter. "I will not stop fighting." Despite her words, however, there has been no confirmation from the White House that Obama has actually agreed to meet with Gaga. But the pop star will not be deterred: "[Bullying] must end," she wrote. "Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey."
Jamey Rodemeyer, from Buffalo, New York, killed himself last weekend. Although Rodemeyer had participated in the It Gets Better campaign, offering his support to gay teenagers, he was the victim of bullying at his own school. On his blog, he wrote: "I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens."
As news emerged of Rodemeyer's death, Gaga expressed sorrow and frustration. "The past days I've spent reflecting, crying, and yelling," she wrote earlier this week. "I have so much anger. It is hard to feel love when cruelty takes someone's life." That anger turned into resolve: "Bullying must become be illegal," she tweeted. "It is a hate crime."
Lady Gaga has been a vocal supporter of gay rights, particularly as an advocate for the end of the US military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy regarding gay recruits. That rule was repealed on Tuesday.

NEW MEDIA/AUD: Queen remix comp

Queen are making clever use of social media to push a competition which neatly raises interest in their back catalogue whilst doing the same for the band's website and general online profile:

As part of their 40^th anniversary celebration/reissue campaign, the members of Queen are turning to their legion of fans to assist with putting a new spin on an old song. The assignment: to remix the song ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ for use on Queen’s official site and the British band’s social media platforms in 2012.

Judging the contest are guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, along with engineer Justin Shirley-Smith and producer Kris Fredriksson. In addition to the prestige that will come with the remix’s global exposure, the Host’s Choice winner will receive a cash prize and paid travel to London for a mastering session. Also included in the prize are Queen-related products, among them a signed copy of ‘Jazz,’ the 1979 album that featured ‘Don’t Stop Me Now.’
May and Taylor will also select a runner-up, and that lucky remixer will receive Queen merchandise (CDs, plus a book, DVD and a Blu-ray disc) plus an Avid Recording Studio system — the same prize pack, by the way, as the People’s Choice winner.
Remix entries must be submitted by Dec. 13; voting runs from Dec. 14 to 21.

Source: http://ultimateclassicrock.com/queen-brian-may-roger-taylor-judging-dont-stop-me-now-remix-contest/

DIGIPAK CONCEPT: Judas Priest eg

Your digipak is for an album.
That means you have to create a tracklisting and briefly justify it.

Singles and best ofs are common, but with some bands with extensive back catalogues other 'themes' are used - the ballads, heaviest of, etc. Here's an interesting take from a UK metal band thats been going for around 40 years (and are bigger in the US than they are here, which is typical for successful UK metal bands), and recently featured on the final of American Idol, demonstrating their mainstream pull.

Judas Priest asked members of a wide range of bands to pick their favourite Priest tracks and used their selections to create a Chosen Few compilation, as detailed below.

You need to start thinking about the digipak and mag ad early - you must take separate photographs and not rely on screengrabs!!!

German metal band The Scorpions are another useful example: they've released a comp of their ballads, their rockier material, and a compilation of both!

 Here's UK sleaze metal outfit Dogs D'Amour striving to avoid the 'best of' label, and working with the fact that they didn't have many 'hits'!

Finally, US funk-matallers Faith No More, reformed to play Download in 2011, with an alternative to their Is This It? The Best Of album.

The following is quoted from http://loudwire.com/judas-priest-rob-halford-ian-hill-interview-chosen-few-upcoming-album/

One interesting aspect about your new compilation ‘The Chosen Few’ is that artists from completely different backgrounds picked some of the same tracks. David Coverdale from Whitesnake and Randy Blythe from Lamb of God both picked ‘The Green Manalishi.’ Klaus Meine from Scorpions and Corey Taylor from Slipknot both picked “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’.” Were you surprised by the unlikely pairings?

Halford: Yeah, absolutely surprised. We had no idea what anyone was going to pick, did we Ian?

Hill: No, it was totally up to them. It’s our only compilation album where we had absolutely no control whatsoever of what’s going on it.

Halford: It’s great that you should marry the guys together though. That Klaus from Scorpions and Corey from Slipknot should both like that particular track and say what they’ve said about particular songs that they enjoy from Priest. It really shows you the way that metal has this amazing generational crossover to two totally different worlds.

Members of Black Sabbath and Metallica were among the acts that chose the tracks for ‘The Chosen Few.’ What songs would you choose from those three acts if you were helping to put together a similar compilation for them?

Halford: For Black Sabbath, I’d probably pick ‘Black Sabbath,’ because that’s like the most evil song ever written. For Metallica, I’d probably pick ‘Blackened.’ I’m into old school Metallica personally and old school Sabbath.

Hill: It’s funny; I’d have to go listen to the albums again. There’s always a hidden gem somewhere. You always pick out, “Oh yeah, I used to love listening to that,” and then you tend to discard the rest of the album as time goes on. We’ve been doing albums now for 30 or 40 years and even with our songs I forget what the hell we’ve done on our albums, so I’d have to look back and listen to them all again and see if there are any hidden gems in there before I just blurt out what I’ve been listening to for the last 30 years.

Both 2011 compilations ‘Single Cuts’ and ‘The Chosen Few’ only cover your work until the early ‘90s; do you feel like this represents your career in the right way or do you feel that some of your later material should have been included?

Halford: I think it’s just a fun retrospective. You can’t do it all in one go, it’s impossible. I think you just have to look at the moment that you’re working with. Maybe there’ll be a ‘Chosen Few 2’ or ‘Chosen Few 3.’

Hill: The other thing is that there was a gap there where Rob wasn’t with us and the two albums we’ve done since Rob’s return are still very, very familiar and very fresh. In a lot of cases they haven’t sunk in yet – the great songs off the last two albums. They haven’t gotten established yet, so that’s maybe one of the reasons.

It seems like when you’re around for such a long time it’s hard for the new stuff to really sink in with the fans.

Halford: That’s the way it goes, yeah.

Hill: Of course, as far as singles are concerned, we haven’t had any singles off the last two albums. [Laughs]

Halford: We’ve never been a singles band. We love our label to death, Sony. That’s why we thought why do you want to do this? They said, “Well we did release single tracks to promote the records, particularly in America, some of which did really well, some of which just filtered through to introduce the new release.” We had no idea that our label had done so much. It was just the idea that we were going to do the ‘Single Cuts.’

When you’ve been together for 40 years, that’s what bands do now. It’s time to reminisce about your life in music and to put together these box sets that you may or may not choose to add to your collection. Some fans just want to go from studio album to studio album and don’t want the box sets, but pretty much all of the Priest fans are like, “Give me it all, I want everything! I want the lot. I want to put my ‘Singles Cuts’ next to my ‘Metalogy,’ I want to put that next to my remasters.”

Hill: It’s a good concept though; you’ve now got the singles out. I’d be great if they then go for the Judas Priest production pieces and then the heavier songs or the faster songs. You can pick out any little area of heavy metal, which is immense really and we’ve done a lot of all of it over the years.