INDUSTRY WEB 2.0 Conglomerates sued over fees for 'broken' downloads

Great illustration over the downsides of web 2.0 and how the likes of John McMuria may be right in arguing that the brave digital new world is simply a slightly reconstituted lineup of giant conglomerates, not the newly democratic, level playing field technotopians see it as.

Universal is in the frame here, but their practices are fairly standard for the record industry.

Article link below the line.

THEORY Andrew Keen arch-critic of web 2.0

It might be more accurate by now to use web 3.0, but either way Keen is not keen on the workings of the new media, and how the social media giants are transforming wider societal and democratic values as users get accustomed to surrendering privacy, to arguably vacuous virtual interaction, and so forth.

I'll return to Keen; I was sure I had already blogged on him. He's a very useful (highly readable!) sceptic of the wonders of our new interconnected age. Some of his work is available free on Kindle (not sure about other e-readers), and the rest is fairly cheap. I've read most of it, and while it is polemical (he has a point or argument to get across), it was no chore - a genuinely entertaining read!

I'll add more later - but you can always Google 'Andrew Keen'...

TECH TIP: Using ViewSync to compare cuts

Thanks to Conal Walsh for this, I'd never heard of ViewSync, a nifty website, designed with gamers in mind, which enables  you to view 2 or more cuts side by side. A nice example of convergence - the sort of high-tech gadgetry that you might associate with the likes of Formula One is now in the hands of everyone. When you're trying to pinpoint the changes made step by step, and also as a tool for some targeted audience feedback (generate different clips of the same short sequence with different editing styles for example), this is a great option.

Conal's ViewSync for nine iterations of the Bad Romance video

WEB 2.0 KICKSTARTER De La Soul Stakes is High ... $600k and rising

News that De La Soul, daisy age hip hoppers (currently on UK tour I see), have raised the 2nd highest figure ever by musicians on KickStarter. At over $600k its still only half of the highest ever ($1.2m), but unlikely to be topped anytime soon.

(Amanda Palmer’s controversial “loss leader” $1.2 million campaign still holds the #1 spot, and it’s hard to imagine anything topping that, especially given this New York Times piece about how Kickstarter donations are not safe investments.) With that money, De La are now free to avoid label concessions in putting together the album, and they tell The New York Times that they plan to use the money on recording the album, as well as on marketing, making videos, and maybe putting together a tour.

SOURCE: Stereogum article.

INDUSTRY Spotify moving into video?

One of the basic issues you have to address if you're making music videos is the perception that they're so, like, 90s, they're just over aren't they?

Ignoring my painful effort at teen skatz, in the era of UGC, where anyone can have a go at a music video with a phone or tablet, never mind a Mac, does the vid retain real cultural cachet? [zeitgeisty?] Is it still the centrepiece of marketing campaigns?

There's no definite answer ..  but I'd offer yes and no. The phenomenon of Gangnam Style is a YouTube video phenomenon; the cheesiness of the video, not the song, made it huge, and its monetisation was primarily through the billion+ YouTube hits and all those cover videos. No, because for all the hype Wrecking Ball's nude antics got Mikey Cyrus, its just part of a marketing mix that includes snogging Madonna and anything else that makes her Daily Mail clickbait. At that end of the market, as Elberse's case studies of Lady Gaga and Jay Z (yay, clickbait ahoy!) shows, tie-ins and distribution (often linked) are key, but so is audience engagement, some degree of interactivity with a campaign.

The humble QR code would have had Dennis McQuail, or Blumler and Katz, originators of the uses and gratifications theory, nodding to themselves, thinking just how right they were!

Where I've used the INDUSTRY heading, I'm often reflecting, quite indirectly at times, on the position of video in the marketing mix, and this post, marking the news that Spotify is set to (I'll try to update once news is out) move into video in a big way, is no exception.

By the way, given the apparent shocking outcome of the UK general election (voting count continues today), bear in mind the noise the Tories made about censoring and age rating music video, could develop into rather a major story for the music industry and even prosumers such as yourselves...

DIFFUSER.FM ARTICLE link.

INDIE RETRO Before blogs there were zines...

Great, in-depth interview with Bruce 'Sub Pop' Pavitt (that's where Nirvana started if you don't know the name).

Simon Reynolds' writing, notably the book Retromania, is a good way of getting a handle on how the music industry and fandom was, back in the day; this interview is a great starter for any such wider reading.

The appeal of retro media and technology, from zines to vinyl, and that ridiculous music movement that insists on using only primitive 80s sequencers, is a marked feature of our postmodern, mashed-up era of pastiche and bricolage. Digitisation has ironically boosted the appeal of analogue technology, at least once it has almost entirely obliterated it from mainstream retailing and usage.

SOURCE: Diffuser.fm.

INDUSTRY Oops I Did It a Game: Play Britney!

Yat another way of making up for losses of recorded music revenues: games for mobile platforms...

Hyperlink below the line

WEB 2.0 INDUSTRY Line up for stickup artists

Yet another social media outlet to bear in mind, this one, Line, allowing acts to sell sound stickers at £1.49. For Paul McCartney its bigger in numbers of followers than his Twitter and Facebook combined.

Hyperlink below the line

TECH TIP: Rotating pdf files

Just had to figure this out so thought I'd share it. You need the full (Pro) Acrobat to save rotated files, but there is a free (limit 10MB) site that allows you do this and save the file...

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

YouTube crushing micro-Indies, web 2.0 remains giants' domain?

Details below:

AUDIENCE: YouGov survey on fans' demographics

Conal cites this in his vodcast.

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 media tab of YouGov's demographic profile of Lady Gaga fans ... apparently older, right-wing S*n readers?!

GENDER: Women less successful on Kickstarter?

Some useful data here in a survey reporting on the comparative levels of success of male/female Kickstarter appeals; females feature in none/1 of top ten most successful appeals across a range of media categories, and female teams fare significantly less well than male teams. However, the report also notes that females often look for smaller amounts (<$5k) and are just as successful in this limited range; females often look specifically to friend and family circles, potentially limiting the scale/ambition of appeals.

Gender in Crowdfunding (Based on Kickstarter Data) from Crowdfund Productions

MAGAZINE AD Vodcast

This vodcast includes a top ten common conventions of music magazine ads for digipak albums, research tips, student examples, and more.

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.

Richard Dyer's star system

This is a simple but highly useful audience/narrative theory, which also reflects standard marketing thinking (question 1 a potential distributor will ask of a film production: who's the star?). Richard Dyer's (Amazon book list) landmark 1979 book Stars argued that the star system was central to how the media operate, and how we read texts. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (his 1986 follow-up) used case studies of Hollywood icons from the golden era, examining 'the ways in which audiences simultaneously construct and consume a particular star's persona' (Wiki). You might see parallels here with much later web 2.0 theorists such as Gauntlett and Gillmor and such declarations as "the former audience" (see this post for associated material on this).

The point here is that your text's narrative extends well beyond the film opening, 4 minute video, or even the wider promotional package.

I thought about this when reading a Film Guardian feature on Tom Cruise and director Christopher Nolan's insistence on diegetic as opposed to CGI stunts:

It goes deeper still though, into the weird contract we draw up with ourselves when we watch film. “Tom Cruise is doing that for real!” we exclaim to ourselves as we see Tom Cruise doing some casual rappelling. “Whoa!” We never truly watch blockbusters as pure narratives, but instead are constantly aware in their place in a wider ecosystem of celebrity, in which Cruise also has divorces and jumps on sofas and twinkles next to fans. We’re in awe of Cruise-as-Hunt rather than Hunt himself. (Tom Cruise, Christopher Nolan, and the new anti-CGI snobbery)

The excellent MediaKnowItAll site has a useful entry on this, considering not just the film angle but also how the music industry inculcates this approach to its modes of operation:

A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music]).  

Their entry is copied in below, but is best appreciated on their site, where you can also click around and find further useful material.

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:

Jarring juxtapositions: twerking in Mastodon vid

This curious countertyping helped Mastodon gain publicity

There can be considerable shock or at least novelty value still in incorporating elements from a contrasting genre; in this example the prog-metal band Mastodon. In their video for The Motherload they incorporate ... twerking!

So, we get some fairly standard, though well-executed (nicely lit, and some effective focus pull), sepia-coloured footage of vaguely demonic figures ... counterpointed with a range of very modern dancers twerking, often in slo-mo and fairly uncomfortable close-up. The point (the 'reading') is debatable, and may simply come down to the shock value, or may be a critique of what the likes of Sinead O'Connor has attacked as exemplifying male industry control over female artists, with Lily Allen's attempted critique itself attacked for allegedly racist undertones.

(skip to the end to view the actual video)

Customised ads within vids: Universal tech deal

More on this shortly: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/30/universal-deal-adverts-mirriad-existing-music-videos.

...Quick summary of key points:

Vloggers + UGC rivalling studios + conglomerates?

Certainly not a new topic this, although I haven't completed adding tags to the entire archive of posts, you'll see that 'UGC' (user-generated content) is a common topic (and I'll have a look to add 'vlogger' where appropriate: video-based bloggers).

Gradually being updated - use the tag clouds!

I blog again on this as its a topic we've been discussing in recent lessons, and I've reflected on in recent posts. As Media students today, the demands on and expectations of you are higher than in the past - with the technology at your fingertips, there is an expectation of at least 'prosumer' levels of quality, ideally there being no clear indication (or anchorage) of your work as student productions at all.

Fragment of a past post on this topic.

The skills you're developing are highly marketable and valuable:

YOU/audience are the product: Julian Assange

When we consider audience theory in Media Studies, the degree of flux and changing views on this is quickly evident, and a major theme in itself. Which, if any, of the long-established audience theories continue to hold true in the digital age, the web 2.0 era? Is it enough to write of "the former audience", Dan Gillmor's (2011) striking phrase? David Gauntlett even went as far as to declare the "end of audience studies" (2007, 2011), although Julian McDougall's (2009, in a very readable, student-friendly book) more moderate point that audiences are fragmenting, making it more difficult to meaningfully analyse or discuss/define audiences, is perhaps more useful.

There are those who see the blurring of the audience/producer line as full of democratic promise, not least Gillmor, though Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture (2008) is perhaps the most striking statement of this.

Is Jenkins too utopian, optimistic? [image source]

Following other blogs

Not just mine/group members, but any interesting blogs you encounter - instructions in this post.

Queens, Kittens + QR Codes: Film about Media coursework

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

Multiple videos for 1 track: U2 One eg

You can find many articles on this example, eg The Inspiration Room.

I've mentioned this several times in past posts, but just realised I've never actually linked them...

Its fairly common for bands to reject a video, or simply to want to see an alternative version, perhaps to boost the chances of airtime.

For U2's global hit single One there were indeed three videos released!

DailyMotion blogger Vampira Maila Nurmi writes:

Three music videos were created for "One". The first, directed by Anton Corbijn, was filmed in Berlin and features the band members performing at Hansa Studios interspersed with footage of Trabants (an East German automobile they became fond of as a symbol for a changing Europe) and shots of them dressed in drag. Bono explained that the idea to crossdress "had been based on the idea that if U2 can't do this, we've got to do it!", and it was fostered by the group's experiences dressing in drag for the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. However, the band pulled the video, fearing the single's status as an AIDS benefit would result in critics finding AIDS-related interpretations of the video. The Edge explained, "We didn't want to be involved in putting back the AIDS issue into the realm of sexuality... It wasn't worth the risk of people imagining we were saying something about the AIDS issue through the drag footage, which was totally not what we were trying to say."

Martin Gore drags up in Depeche Mode's Suffer Well

Use my playlist to explore the world of DMode vids!

FINANCE: pay to meet-and-greet stars at gigs

Read Michael Hann's article here.

This is either despicable exploitation or a sensible means of countering the reduced revenues from record sales: the trend for pop/rock acts to offer premium gig packages which include meet and greets amongst other things. Would you pay £215 to meet Avril Lavigne and have a photo taken 'with' her (standing apart with a clearly faked, fixed grin)? Clearly for a lot of folks the answer is mais oui, but she's just one of many plying this field:

On Kiss's forthcoming US tour, for example, you can pay $1,250 (£737) for a package that includes a seat in the first 10 rows, a meet-and-greet, a photo with the band, autographs from the band, sitting in on the sound check and a selection of merchandise. A similar package for Def Leppard, who are opening for Kiss, is $750 ($441). The lower the star power, the lower the price. For example, £159 will buy you the chance to meet Michael Bolton on his UK tour – and get the inevitable photographs and array of merch.