OUR FINISHED MYSPACE

Link above...

OUR FINISHED ALBUM COVER

Our Album Cover

Album Cover References

Artist Name

Soo, we have been thinking a lot about our artists name and we have narraowed it down to three.
1) Sparky
2) Skye
3) Sapphire (Saffy for short)


No one that we have asked so far likes Sparky because everyone thinks it sounds like a childrens tv presenter or a dog's name.  So then we did a poll of Skye or Sapphire with our target audeince and the results were that 60% said they liked Skye better and 40% said Sapphire. We agreed with our audience and so we went with Skye. I am very pleased with this as i think it is a really original and memorable name and it is girly but also shows off her quirky personality. So its perfect!

Teacher Feedback

Yesterday miss gave us our first proper feedback on our footage. She said...

*Our "camera movement was the best out of all the groups"! (OO YEAH)

* Some shots she felt were too long, and we agree. We need to cut them up and put other shots inbetween to keep it interesting.

* She thought we got a great performance out of Sian, but that her lipsyncing wasn't always perfect so we need to play around with the editing to get it as good as we can. Or we can just make it so amazing that no one notices.

Reflections from the shoot

So over half term we had our shoots! On wednesday 28th Ot me and danni and tom went by ourselves to our location and shot some scenery shots so that we didn't have to waste Sian's time. Then on Saturday 31st Oct we did our first shoot with Sian. We shot in our Carnaby and Soho locations and i think this actually went really well.

We realised that when having moving camera-work, it looked much better if we carried the camera on a tripod to steady it, so i think that those shots look much better. However although we were planning on shooting on Sunday 1st Nov there was torrential rain. Shooting outside in October and November we knew that we may come up against weather issues, and so we planned for this by having many colourful umbrellas on stand-by, that we could work into our shoot. However, this was just too heavy and we didn't want to risk the equipment in such heavy rain. Consequently we are now shooting next sunday 8th Nov - this is when we will do our shots in Brick lane and Spitalfields.

Having looked at our footage from last sunday, we have realised that it is quite good to have a weeks gap between the shoots as we can really see what we need to do. Therefore we were able to come up with another shooting list for this weekend, meaning we won't miss anything.

Overall i think it did go well and i am happy with the footage we have. Hopefully this weekend will go well as i can't wait to get all the footage to ether so we can really get into the editing.

Album Covers Notes

A) 1- Typical Features:
* Barcode
* Album Title
* Artist Name
* Track List
* Web Adress
* Strong, main image
* Booklet with additional info and extras
* PUG

2- Categories
* Genre
* Groups/Solo Artist
* Male/Female
* Drawing/ Photo
* Image of artist/or not
* Debut Album?
* Greatist Hits?
* Compilations or one artist
* Record Label
* Era
* Double Disc or not
* Audience

3- Different Functions they serve:
* Attract buyer = constructing an audience
* Show artist
* Informative, shows which artist, what album
* Track listing, how many, sometimes shows times
* Style of Album to match style of artist
* Selling the genre

B) Michael Jackson
History: Past, Present, Future book 1
Released: June 1995

*Very striking image on the front. Michale Jackson in concrete as a statue, behind is a fireball.
* Prestning himself as a statue gives us the idea that it is all very epic, and he is creating history.
* Fireball continues on the back - implying the songs themselves are epic and amazing and histroy making
* The booklet inside conventionally shows song words. But also begins with a written extract by Elizabeth Taylor and Steven Spielburg basically saying what a legend MJ is. Also lots of pictures of him growing up, his life, him performing and people at his concert holding signs saying 'king of pop' etc - once again presenting him as a historical legend with an epic life.

DYM MYSPACE FEEDBACK

A good range of examples provided with confident analysis. Possibly, make your identification of the Myspace conventions more obvious.

Myspace and Website Analysis

Madonna Myspace
www.myspace.com/madonna

The background colour of this myspace page is black with a white pattern of stripes which make it kind of look like speakers representing the dance music she’s making at the moment. But what immediately catches your eye is the massive heading ‘Madonna celebration, the ultimate greatest hits album’ predominantly yellow and pink, which are bold, fun colours illustrating the feeling of celebration. As you scroll down there is lots of pictures from her album cover where she looks like Marilyn Monroe, giving it a look of an icon for her greatest hits. There are links to lots of videos mainly of her new song ‘celebration’, as well as this you can play many of her recent songs, there is the option to add her as a friend, a link to her blog and a promotion for the charity she supports called ‘Raising Malawi’.

There is also a feature where Madonna says ‘bring me to your city’, ‘demand it’ where you can request her to visit where you live. And then at the bottom there are loads of posts from her fans, mainly just saying ‘I love you Madonna’ – this shows her diverse range of fans.

Myspace and Website Analysis

VV Brown Website
http://vvbrown.com/

VV Brown’s website is quite simple, with a plain white background. There is a MS of her at the top, wearing a leopard print hoodie which makes her stand out, and is quite striking against the plain background. The leopard print also gives her a quirky feel, which represents her image and music quite well. Additionally her name written in dots is another striking feature which stands out straight away, and I think is her signature font. It has lots of links to her myspace, facebook, bebo, twitter, youtube page and last.fm.

Her music had been described as funk, soul and retro pop, and the style of the website captures this quite well – but this is mainly shown through pictures of her, and her personal styling. There is also a video of her performing live at V festival. At the bottom of the page we are shown her record label ‘island records’ this is definitely a conventional feature of an official website, but there is not a lot of information about island records. When thinking about her target audience it is quite hard to get a sense of it just from her website, but i would guess young people because obviously she is young and she has quite a cool funky image. I would also guess probably mainly girls.

Myspace and Website Analysis

Black Eyed Peas Official Website
http://www.blackeyedpeas.com/

The main image at the top is unconventionally, not of the band, it is of a computer generated green head. The same as their new album cover – The END, this indicates as to the BEPs electronic hip hop music from this album. Also their signiture font from their album cover is used quite a lot on the website. Down the right hand side there are lots of links; for example to the BEPs official store, iTunes downloads, Will.I.am’s solo song as well as Fergie's official store. Again this is unconventional to be promoting individual projects on the bands website. There were also many posts from the website members down the side – showing their huge amount of fans.

Down the middle there are more links, and boxes of info about the release of their albums deluxe addition, their appearance on Oprah as well as a link enabling you to vote for them at the recent VMA awards. Surprisingly I couldn’t see any links to Myspace, blogs, or twitter pages of the band, at least not on the home page – although there are links to Fergie and Will.i.am’s personal websites.

Website

For our ancillary texts we have to do an album cover and website. We have discussed this as a group and decided that we would like to do Myspace, as after conducting some research we can see that they are very popular with musicians. They are especially popular with indie musicians which is our genre, as Chick Habit is indie/retro pop.
Here are some links so some that we found very inspiring:
Lily Allen:  http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic
Katy Perry: http://www.myspace.com/katyperry
Madonna: http://www.myspace.com/madonna

4Ps

1. Summarising in your own words what the 4Ps of music marketing are. Use the following categories:
a) What band/artist related products can audiences buy?
You can buy CDs of the band.artists songs, as well as DVDs of them performing. You can also get a lot of merchandise from band websites such as posters
b) Where can audiences buy/listen to music/merchandise/hardware?
Band Websites, concerts and gigs, festivals, tv, radio, myspace or facebook pages, download sites such as iTunes.

c) Give 2 or 3 examples of paid-for/subscription based and free products.
Paid-for/Subscription products: CD's bought in shops, singles, albums or music videos bought online (iTunes), band or artist merchandise from sites or stores and magazines which specialise for music.
Free products: music downloads (limewire), free concert tickets

d) List between 5 and 10 examples of creative music marketing strategies (including at least 3 internet based examples).

The Streets: a crop circle was made of Mike Skinners face to promote the new album. He also gave away free songs to his fans via Twitter.

VV Brown: There is a banner on the internet where is climbs inside a white box and performs in it.

Britney: Had a free give-away of tickets to her Circus Tour, which also helps promote and create a buzz around her album. She did this via her website.

Pink: She turned up to sing in the big Tmobile karaoke in Trafalgar square, which helped create a buzz around her right around the time where she had a enw album coming out.

Lily Allen: She had an internet game called 'Lily Allen in Escape the Fear' to promote her single 'The Fear'

2. Who is frukt uk and what is their mission statement/company ethos<
Frukt UK are amusic marketing agency. They create and develop ideas that use music as a means of marketing.

Mission Statement:
“We’re all about music and are really very fond of it. Music colours people’s everyday lives…We help brands access the passion and the communities, the lifestyle and the artists.”

Our Treatment

Pitch 1

The Streets - Case Study

1) Summarise the changing image of the band/artist as it has developed over time. It might also be useful to summarise the music genre also.

From 200-2003, The Streets were a group and their genre was more UK garage/house/hip-hop. They set out to push garage in a new direction.
2004+ Mike Skinner is now solo, still called the Streets, and his music has become much more mainstream, as it has a more indie feel, however it does still maintain a garage beat.


2) Who are the fans? Do you have any sense of how the music companies have segmented the audiences? To what extent has the branding of a band been linked to target audience?

The core audience are young males, more working class, this is because of the strong garage feel, and also because front man Mike Skinner grew up in working class Birmingham (despite performing in a cockney, London accent).

The branding of the band is linked to the target audience because the album covers show very ordinary pictures of council estates, bus stops and cigarette lighter, very mundane everyday scenes that the target audience can relate to. Nevertheless as The Streets became more popular his album covers reflect a wealthier lifestyle ie- a posh car, but he is still dressed in scruffy jeans and a t-shirt, to indicate to his fans that fame hasn’t changed him.


3) What marketing strategies can you identify? What kinds of strategies can you list? (above/below-the line? unexpected promo stunts? etc). List any examples of the use of synergy with other industries to promote other media/products in connection with a band/artist.

• Website: skinnermike.com – it’s the official website and blog of The Streets
• Myspace.com/thestreets - he posts new music and up and coming gigs etc.
• Twitter – Mike Skinner gave away 3 free songs to fans
• Youtube – all his songs are up there.
• He faked his house being re-possessed as a publicity stunt for an album launch
• There was a crop circle made of his face, again to promote an album launch.


4) Add any relevant links to your blog, especially Myspace page/music vids/official websites etc. A couple of illustrations (e.g key web design graphics/album cover photography) would also be useful to add to your blogs

See above (Q3)

Moodswings - Video Referenceing

Below is the video for Charlotte Church - Moodswings. We discussed doing something along these lines where our main girl is dancing and her outfit changes as she does so. We think if this is done well it could look really coool. We also like the close up shots in this video and we think we could do something inspired by this as well as the main girl could be singing and her hair and make up could change.

Group Meeting 3

18/09/09
Lat Friday the 18th we had a meeting with Ms Blackborow and i am very pleased because she liked our song choice. The only thing we were concerned about was how short it was becuase it is only 2 minutes 7 seconds. However we discussed over coming this with a short narrative at the beginning and the end to the song to add about 20 seconds to it. This is also good as we weren't planning on having narrative during the song, we want it to be more about performance so this gives us a bit of narrative to keep it interesting at the beginning and end. The video we referenced for this was Rihanna's - 'Unfaithful' as this video has about 15 seconds of narrative either side of the song, as we think this works really well.
Ms B then showed us a video that was made in 2003, 'i believe' - joGo, the whole video wasn't really about the lyirs of the song but the style and performance was the main feature this is exactly what we want.

Mind- Map

For our first group meeting having a final song in mind, me and Danni decided to jot down a few of our initial ideas for the video. Here are the Mind-maps we made showing our first thought as to the look and content of the video. These helped a lot in the meeting as it ment it was easier for us to describe our throughts to Tom and Ms Blackborow, as they could clearly see the direction we were thinknig of.

April March - Chick Habit

We think we are porbably going to use April March - Chick Habit as our final idea. We think it could be really fun to do as it is quite kooky, retro and upbeat despite the lyrics. This will also give us great styling opportunities as although it was released in the early 90s, we all think that it has a very 60s feel about it so we will try and use 60s influences in the styling. We have discussed taking inspiration from 60s icons such as Twiggy.