CONVERGENCE Madonna fan remixes at Apple stores

https://www.macrumors.com/2019/06/14/apple-madonna-today-at-apple-music-lab/

ALT VIDEOS dance performance and animation

IN THIS POST: Multiple examples of alternative videos; using animation; UGC/fan-made videos; the role of dance moves in vids; examples from UNKLE, Billy Eilish, Sepultura, Arctic Monkeys. See alt videos tag etc for more

Spotted this thanks to a Yr8 student - yet another type of alternative (not the main promo) video, to go with visualizer, lyric, unwrapping, teaser, single shot, performance, acoustic (not to mention fan-made, covers, reaction videos and UGC generally)...

Billie Eilish has released a 'dance performance' video for Ocean Eyes.

Smart move which achieves a key aim of pop vids especially - to generate a replicable dance sequence, which might then be taken up by (especially) young fans for playground simulacra or, the holy grail, posted UGC vids which are directly monetised anyway through YouTube but also generate further free publicity by appearing on Twitter, FB (etc) feeds of friends/followers. 

You should think about replicating at least one of these - or even just short teaser clips (or gifs) for the website + social media feeds that push traffic to the YT channel (even if the full vid isn't actually there), a great, easy way to show (if you provide detailed research/explanation) insight into audiences and industry.

Approaching 12m views on 25.9.18

CONVENTIONS RESEARCH + BLOGGING in 10 categories

(TBC) I've previously provided an extensive list of themes to consider, with notes on each of these. Having reviewed these, I've come up with a more streamlined list of 10, combining these and some additional aspects. These will help you evidence research/analysis/applied understanding of all 3 CIA (Conventions, Industry, Audience) and go a long way to preparing for your 4 evaluation Qs.

You can gather and build your research through any combination of posts so long as this eventually includes posts titled:

GENERAL CONVENTIONS1: Lyrics/visuals; Narrative 
GENERAL CONVENTIONS2: Genre characteristics
GENERAL CONVENTIONS3: Intertextuality + postmodernism   
GENERAL CONVENTIONS4: Representations 
GENERAL CONVENTIONS5: Cinematography + Editing
GENERAL CONVENTIONS6: UGC
GENERAL CONVENTIONS7: Alt vids
GENERAL CONVENTIONS8: Distribution, social
GENERAL CONVENTIONS9: Branding/promo package 
GENERAL CONVENTIONS10: Possible influences SUMMARY

That's 10 research themes. For each one you need to indicate ideas/aspects you've seen that might influence your work (and then sum this up).

1-5 are conventions focused (+ incorporate Goodwin's 6 conventions), 6-9 go further into industry and audience, and 10 is simply an overall summary of which points are more likely to be reflected in your idea.

You will have some posts, including from class and homework, on individual videos, titling like this:

GENERAL EG1: Artist 'Track Title' (year) 

This phase of pre-production is to help inform your initial pitch development. You will repeat the process with a similar list for GENRE conventions research.

AUDIENCE WEB 2.0 BOOK active fandom UGC

This Wired feature on how the audience has become more active through the convergence of the online world is a great one to get into multiple concepts linked to audience. A few excerpts below (initially about UK prog rock Marillion, who ended up touring the US only because fans funded it!!!)

ALT VIDEOS Tendencies to tout tour tickets

I've blogged on alternative, secondary music video formats before: the one-take, single shot video; the lyric video; the album trailer; the special edition or merchandise unwrapping.

To this list, one worth pondering for an additional quickfire production that will help to drive website and social media content and engagement, add the tour date video (with website plugging included too).

The example is from 80s crossover (punk/thrash) legends Suicidal Tendencies. The video, spotted from a browse of the TeamRock site, a rich source for spotting evolving marketing strategies, includes several features:

• performance footage
• album art and website splash page, with plugs for both
• like the most basic lyric videos, the main content is a vertically scrolling list of tour dates, white font on a black background
• the audio consists of a snippet from a new album track, NOT the full track
• The unpolished look is further evidence of how artists have incorporated audience approaches (fan-made videos) into their own playbooks. Even the mighty Metallica have dropped an unwrapping video, a hugely popular format that may have had pop origins but is now seen from audiences and artists across the age and genre spectrum.

I'll add to this more insight gleaned from the TeamRock site (an e-zine side to a stable of print magazines such as Classic Rock); Iron Maiden providing another example of how acts monetise themselves in an era of low record sales:

Iron Maiden Fan Club members will be given access to an exclusive pre-sale, with information available via the official website.A Trooper VIP upgrade package will also be available, giving fans early access to the venue, exclusive goodies as well as food and Trooper beer. VIP tickets cost £140 and gig tickets will need to be bought separately. [LouderSound]

Artists variously charge for photos with fans, sometimes as part of a VIP backstage package, have licensed drinks, offer exclusives to fan club or registered website members (often charging a subscription fee).

...Maiden are a great example of a long-running act who skilfully use traditional and social media, and diverse merchandising, to successfully monetise their art and brand. Here's another example from them...the thankyou to fans, a natural example of direct address made possible by online media.

...

[recent update:]

I mention beer as a great example of merch - you can buy both Slayer and Iron Maiden beer in Luxembourg (Auchan), and Motorhead, plus some other branded wine/spirits if I recall correctly. That this is now a common strategy, especially in heavy metal, can be seen from a simple google ('heavy metal beer'). See this Pinterest for a gallery (pic, right comes from it):

UGC WEB 2.0 Fan album art, track listing

Faux real: Taylor Swift, Jay-Z and the ‘leaks’ that are too good to be true https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/29/taylor-swift-jay-z-leaks-too-good-be-true?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

COPYRIGHT FAIR USAGE Star Wars Silence Sued

https://www.wired.com/story/the-star-wars-video-that-baffled-youtubes-copyright-cops?mbid=social_fb

UGC Depeche Mode fan takeover Facebook for a year

Another new twist in the web 2.0/UGC/convergence mode, this one reflecting the pattern that's seen lyric videos go from fan-made to official releases. The "former audience" indeed!

Headline story on Pitchfork - many more sites/e-zines followed suit

Depeche Mode, a huge selling act that comes high up concert revenue charts when they tour, have announced that fans can apply to be one of 365 who get to control their Facebook page for a day - a page with 7m followers.

This announcement has helped gain a lot of free, high-profile publicity.

Xmas campaigns and social media engagement

Metallica fan's festive treat.

This is a key time of year for acts to engage with their audiences, and you'll see all sorts of examples of this. Social media is primarily used by acts to create the sense of enagement and interaction with fans - even though, for bigger artists at least, most of this 'personal' interaction is actually produced by hired help.

Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie is given an annual Xmas makeover

UGC-style self mash-up: Depeche Mode's Martyr

I wasn't so sure myself if this was UGC or official, but apparently, yes, it is the 'real' deal!

A short post this one...
Its not the first time I've used Depeche Mode to exemplify postmodernism (or layering for that matter!) ... and, okay, I'm a fan so I'm more inclined to note what they do

But ... this is a great example of a band - amongst the world's highest selling, who have been selling global stadia for decades now - using something that has the look of a fan-made video, or UGC, as an official release.

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

POSTMODERN, SIMULACRA Weird Al Yankovich parody v pastiche

[UPDATE FEB 2017 -scroll down for Weird Al discussion] This is a topic I've frequently touched upon, so you should also look at this post on Weezer...
 
As its such a useful example, I've referenced it in further posts on this topic (and others): use the tag!







The excellent, very readable, history of the music video by Austerlitz discusses this video - it really is worth having a flick through the index ... or just reading the book from scratch! [tag; specific post on the book]

Then there's a Robert Palmer example of intertextuality, a tag applied even more frequently than (queer theorist; gender as performativity) Judith Butler I see...

Is THIS depiction of Elvis (the magnificent Tortelvis!) any less 'real' than the videos/film clips that define him in the popular imagination - an image Elvis and his manager fought to control, but for many people boils down to a fat guy in a comedy white jumpsuit? Is the Weird Al version of 'Wacko Jacko' (below) any less real than the MJ we think we know from media coverage? The creators of the Weezer video did so having been bombarded with signifiers of the decade, such as the sitcom they parodied ... their representation (or simulacrum) is itself now a powerful signifier that will influence many more impressions of 'the 50s'.

If I asked you now to think about 'the 60s', chances are you'd think of hippies, flower power, the Stones ... many of the iconic 60s festivals were actually in the 70s, ditto many of the Stones classics thought of as 60s, while the metropolitan (major city) drug phenomenon took until the 1970s to spread further into towns and cities across Western countries, beyond London, San Fransisco etc. The 60s ended around 1974?! Maybe 1973?!
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A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists.^[1] Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.^[2] [Wiki]

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...

Fan-made vids: MGMT's Kids

I've raised this in a previous post, but its worth flagging up.

This is the fan-made vid for MGMT's "Kids", fast-approaching 40m YouTube views, that Sam mentioned, and an example of what is likely to be a growing trend: bands using fan-made vids directly for their promotional/marketing value, and their convenience as a means of building a relationship with the fanbase. You can read more about this here.

At the time the article was written, this video had racked up 10 MILLION hits on YouTube alone...

You can debate the virtues or otherwise of the fan-made video, but it certainly struck a chord, despite the existence of a strikingly weird official video - compare the two below...

THE STUDENT VIDEO

By August 2015 this video had racked up 50 MILLION hits, and creator J Salmon has smartly embedded links to other work of his - picking up 8k subscribers in the process

THE OFFICIAL VIDEO

Remarkably, the official vid has 2m fewer hits to date!

UGC FAN-MADE VIDEOS Sepultura use fan vid

I've mentioned this in another (under construction) post, but it merits singling out.
Before I give the actual example, here's what you can learn from this:

• don't restrict yourself to your preferred genre/s! the odds are that few of you are Sepultura fans, but you can pick up great ideas and examples by looking beyond the obvious (take the Morbid Angel [silent movies?!] or Rammstein [Snow White?!] or Rage Against the Machine [Beach Boys?!] examples...)
• embrace the random chances that web 2.0 throws up; I came across this only because I scrolled further into a lengthy web page, despite having found the information I was looking for. I didn't know these Brazilian thrashers had commissioned a competition for a fan-made video until I spotted it here! Some of the examples above come from videos I've spotted in e-zine articles I 'subscribe' to through FB
• when Gillmor writes of the 'former audience', Gauntlett of 'the end of audience studies' and Jenkins of 'convergence culture', these are not hazy ivory tower academics, but active researchers reflecting on clear contemporary trends; you need clear-cut examples to help illustrate such ideas and arguments in the context of the format you're working in
• examples such as this also help to justify any work you do on viral-style/UGC productions, evidencing that it is a very much real phenomenon
• could there be a better illustration of the concept of the 'prosumer'?

The actual video, and further details, are below the line...

DIGIPAK vodcast

A vodcast taking you through some common conventions (a top ten), looking at some of the relevant videos on YouTube (company demos, fan vids, Photoshop guides, coursework Evaluations), research tips, and how this fits into a wider promotional package incorporating a music video, CD/DVD digipak sleeve and magazine ads for the digipak.

DIGIPAK video resources: company guides, fan vids, tutorials, Evaluations...

IN THIS POST: Gaga and other fanatics' vids on their digipaks; commercial demos of what a digipak looks like and multi-panel options; examples of student Evaluation vids going through the steps of creating their digipaks; Adobe Photoshop and After Effects tutorials. First up, a vodcast featuring elements of these. See also: this post gathers together past posts/links.

DB VODCAST



FANatics' DIGIPAK WORSHIPPING
Having just finished a vodcast on magazine ads for digipaks, I was having a quick look at what's on YouTube on the topic of digipaks ... and came across this, part of the phenomenon of UGC that Lady Gaga has masterfully exploited/encouraged, a rather worshipful rundown of a Gaga digipak - even the comments below largely reflect this serious, dedicated tone. To me, quite bizarre, to the 'Little Monsters' a nice expression of their community identity - but overall no odder than the YouTube-leading content of gamers' musings.


Its not just LG fans that engage in this; this chap, a metalhead, has a few smackdowns he wants to lay down on digipaks (with some strong language) ... and he's not the only one! (Good call on Nuclear Assault's Survive, 'DissonantReviews', classic!)



COMMERCIAL DEMOS OF DIGIPAK OPTIONS
Here's a simple 37-sec demo of a 6-panel digipak:

Inside: Hollywood blurring audience/producer; are YOU?

'Social film': blurring audience/ad/producer divide

In time, we'll consider various web 2.0 theories that typically argue that the contemporary, highly interactive (as opposed to top-down, one way) web is seeing the traditional dividing line between audience/consumer and producer wither away. Concepts such as UGC (user-generated content) and fan-made videos (a key revenue source for YouTube and record labels, through the advertising attached to these) have become very mainstream. Viral campaigns also present ads as fictional or reality texts (including music videos, not just film/'reality' clips).

The fiasco of Snakes on a Plane showed that democratising and outsourcing creative work to an audience (in that case in an effort to create money-spinning buzz and awareness) can be a disaster, but we will most certainly see more and more of this. I've blogged elsewhere about examples of film production company Working Title's slick marketing campaign for films such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which used online (spy-style) puzzles as part of multimedia campaign spanning supermarkets, posters and other such traditional fare with social media elements.

If you watch the short video below (3mins), ask yourself where the line is drawn here between audience and producer, and film and advertising (the title meshes with Intel's slogan, Intel inside), with the audience given chances to appear in the film and shape the script, whilst the blogs and other online videos and guides that sprang became part of the meta-text (a postmodern theory term).

Then ask yourself what use YOU are making of social media for producing your work. Have YOU used social media for...

• casting?
• initial genre/audience research through fan forums?
• generating pre-release buzz through a company blog/FB/Twitter/Instagram (etc!)?
• gaining audience feedback through any of the above (and YouTube/Vimeo of course)?
• used tagging/labels in Blogger/YouTube etc to attract more hits to help with the above?
• tried YouTube video responses/messages/comments to link to other film/video-makers?
• designed a viral-style campaign element which helps to involve an audience and increase publicity/awareness?
• generated and used a QR code as part of this?
• generally considered options for direct audience involvement in/influence on your production?

This is the film Inside, which is itself a good example of the viral methods used by conglomerates these days to get through to ad-weary and wary consumers (Toshiba and Intel were behind this movie): IMDB, Wiki, links to their FB/website etc are in this article. They coined the term 'social film' for this approach.

Viral vids Audience remakes: White Stripes

I'll offer this as a simple example of a vid that's tailor-made (I've no idea if this was the intention; their vids do tend to feature kaleidoscope or psychedelic repeating patterns) to encourage or facilitate fan-made vids. A video that could be used to invite fans to submit their own version, for publishing via a band's site/YT channel/Instagram site etc:

Easy to replicate via cropped layering, and open to creative interpretation (other items/places/people appearing, not necessarily linked to the music or performance).
Remember, U2 released three videos for One; even the world's biggest bands have used secondary vids to maximize the promotional impact of vid releases and to suggest that they've not lost sight of their humbler roots.

For other examples/inspiration, take a look at this previous post.

I'd really welcome any suggestions of other examples you come across.

How YouTube fan vids make artists money: Harlem Shake eg

IN BRIEF:

The stats in this article seemed modest by March

The bottom line? The dominant narrative around digitisation and the music industry is of piracy and the disruption to the traditional record industry model centred on purchases of physical media. How fair the payment splits are can be debated, but music video's viral potential does offer a chance to make money - even if its fans (re)making their own versions of an original video. Their work can deliver significant cash to the artists behind the original.

Its a simple but fundamental point if you want to understand how the music business works today: while debates may rage around streaming services such as Spotify and just how much/little remuneration they provide to artists, there is serious money to be made from distribution through YouTube - and that includes fan-made vids/UGC (user-generated content). The lexicon of YT would label many of these 'responses'.

Scroll to the bottom for info on the new YouTube-based record label, All Def Music, a collaboration between Russell Simmons, Universal Music Group and others. 

This blog's description makes reference to the ongoing status of music video, and particularly to the scope of viral hits to raise serious revenues. Here's a little detail on how a much-mimicked video, in a very postmodern fashion (one that would gain a knowing smile from Andy Warhol, whose 'Factory' churned out 'his' work actually produced by others!), makes money directly from the multiple 'tributes', 'responses', remakes, term them what you will:

Those who enroll in the content ID service give YouTube a reference file of their content. They then choose between getting videos that are found to use that content blocked from the site, or taking a slice of the advertising revenue those rip-off videos generate and tracking the original's success.