Thursday 29 September 2016

Vodcast 2: Industry

WHAT I LEARNED: THE IMPORTANCE OF A VINYL ON OUR WEBSITE + IMPORTANCE OF OUR MUSIC BEING AVAILABLE ON STREAMING SERVICES 



Streaming: why is the music industry unhappy with YouTube (and others)? What is VEVO?
According to an article from the verge.com YouTube claims that it has paid $3 billion to the music industry.



However there is the constant struggle and battle of whether they should be paying more. The music from the music industry are the ones that helped YouTube become famous in the first place after  it was first founded in February 2005. This is when VEVO comes into the picture. VEVO stands for Video Evolution and consists of the music videos that are owned by Sony Music Entertainment and the Universal Music Group. YouTube hosts several VEVO music videos  and VEVO is therefore sharing their advertising revenue, and have been able to find an agreement with YouTube.

Digitisation and web 2.0: how have these caused ‘disruption’ within the industry?
The Internet and digitisation have ruined or disrupted the main role of the big music companies.
Several people do not want to buy CD's anymore, due to the fact that you are now able to download them and stream them directly from YouTube rather than having to go into a shop and pay around 10-15 Euros meaning between roughly 8£ and 13£ for each CD.
The change in technology has also had a huge impact on the music industry. It has developed from vinyl's right on to the discman and the MP3 player, up to the first version of the I-Pod and now several people are listening to their music via their Smartphone, by streaming it from YouTube or using free apps such as SoundCloud and/or Spotify.
These apps are completely free and allow you to listen to every music for free. iTunes, did up until even just a year ago, still charge 0,99 Euros for every piece of music that you wanted to buy. However, their latest invention has ben to introduce Apple Music where you then pay around 15 Euros per month and can then download as much music as you want. Some people still like to pay for their music because they would like to support the artist and the music industry.
However, technology has also has positive aspects, such as the fact that several people that are now
famous have become known through YouTube. A great example of this is the case of Justin Bieber. He was first discovered on Youtube at the age of 13/14 and is today a very big popstar. Another case is the one of Christina Grimmie, who became famous on YouTube and through her many followers and fans decided to enter the Voice competition, where she had her major breakthrough.

Piracy: what are the figures and arguments on both sides? Do the industry exaggerate the revenues lost? Do your peers tend to engage in piracy? What are the consequences?

A major issue with the streaming from YouTube is that it belongs under the category of piracy. Music piracy is the copying of copies of pieces of music for which the artist or the copyright-holding company does not receive any money and does not give permission. This is ofcourse also a contributor to the decrease of the money the different artists are earning in the music industry. Streaming services such as Spotify have been a great help to decrease the amount of users pirating music. Spotify is a free music service that allows users to listen to music without paying. However, it doesn't allow users to buy the music. So how does it earn it's money? By getting money from the users who subscribe and get the membership.

How and why is vinyl making a comeback?

Clothing stores such as Urban Outfitters have also begun to sell vinyls of pop singers and bands that are hitting the charts nowadays. During the last couple of years, vinyl have become a fashionable trend to have for young adults. These young adulty who grew up without vinyl's unlike their parents and are now discovering the good sound quality of vinyl's which are better than CD's. The fact that vinyl has become popular again, can be compared to a type of clothes that might have been fashionable in the 80s or 90s and is now coming back as well.




According to an article from the guardian, however, vinyl still only represents 2% of the music industry. According to the article "Vinyl still remains a niche product, accounting for just 2% of the UK's recorded music market."




To what extent have physical media sales dropped? Do streaming revenues make up for this?

According to an article from the guardian the music store HMV (His Master's Voice) renewed and went into the video game market due to a decrease in physical media sales. According to an article from techcrunch streaming services grew to 317 billion song streams in 2015, which was the double from 2014 where 164.5 billion songs were streamed from streaming services.
During the last couple of years physical media sales have dropped significantly, meaning that not many people want to buy CD's anymore.

Vodcast 1: Codes and Conventions of MVid's

WHAT WE DID APPLY: THE IMPORTANCE OF LIP-SYNCING VERISMILITUDE + CABLES ATTACHED TO INSTRUMENTS TO ACHIEVE VERISIMILITUDE + A LINEAR NARRATIVE 

A music video is a piece of marketing merchandise to promote the artist and sell the product (song). Each music video is special because they all have their different ways of portraying the meaning of the song and portraying the artist. 




Script: 

There are several types of codes and conventions for music videos, which is what I will be looking at in this vodcast. The general conventions include: the different styles; narrative, performance and concept. Further conventions consist of the lip-syncing verisimilitude, a dance routine in the music video and the different camera techniques. The entire mise-en-scene consisting of costume, location, props, make-up etc. is also an important convention. 

narrative music video follows a storyline. There are two types of narrative, which are called linear and fragmented. A linear narrative has a beginning, a middle and an end, and these components are presented in that order, as with fairy tales. Whereas a fragmented narrative, however, might have a beginning, a middle and an end, but the components are mixed together. This means, that the narrative might start in the middle of the story, transition back to the beginning of the tale and then flash forward to the end. A great example for an artist that has created music videos with both narratives is Katy Perry. In her music video for the song Last Friday Night, the narrative starts at the end of the story, transitions back to the beginning of the story and then plays through to the end. This indicates a fragmented narrative
Whereas an example from Katy Perry for a linear narrative is her music video for Thinking of You, which tells the story from the beginning to the end, like a fairytale.

A concept of a music videos can for example be a short film that is created for the specific song. Great examples of this include Michael Jackson's short-film for Thriller, but also the more recent music video of the boy band One Direction song Best Song Ever. These short-films than also follow either a fragmented or linear narrative

A performance music video is where the focus is on the leadsinger and their performance. A great example of performance is BeyoncĂ© 's Single Ladies , where there is no narrative and you see the artist performing continuously. However in these types of music videos the audience can't engage with the video as much and they can't relate to the video, which is why they are not that popular. But despite of this several people love Single Ladies for the coreography in the music video, which leeds me to my next point of dance routines.

Some dance routines that can be tracked back to years ago when they were first seen in music videos. Some good examples of this include Michael Jackson's moves such as the Moon Walk in Billie Jean and his dance routine in his famous music video Thriller where he performs with a good amount of dancers. Ofcourse there is also this example of the song Asereje by the Las Ketchup band which I have blogged on in my post on Andrew Goodwin's theory of the 6 features in music videos.



However, a more recent routine that you would probably all know is the so called "Cup Song". It became famous through the movie Pitch Perfect and has since taken the internet by storm. It is a hard yet also simple routine to learn with the use of a plastic cup.



There are some common conventions of shots that are used in music videos. One of the main shots is an extreme-close-up, which is either on the artist to show their emotions or some of the instruments such as the base of the drum kit. Also, it can be of big significance to have the cables of the music instruments, such as the cable from the microphone, to create verisimilitude even though they are not actually plugged in, this is what we have done for our class project on "We don't talk anymore".   

The lip-syncing performance is also very important for a music video in order for it to achieve verisimilitude. It also gives the audience the opportunity to sing along with the artist.

The different locations used in a music video are very important for the narrative but also for the general mise-en-scene. Two great examples of a music vid with a good location that Bronwen and I will take inspiration from are from the songs Faded by Alan Walker and True Friends by Bring Me The Horizon. Another element of the mise-en-scene that we got inspiration for was to put the music instruments outside in the rain, while the band play it. This inspiration was taken from the music video by the band You Me at Six for the song Stay With Me, and the unofficial music video that was created by Nanalew for the song Sail by Awolnation.

Tuesday 20 September 2016

Practice Video 1: Production Schedule

WHAT I LEARNED: CREATE AN UPDATED PROD. SCHED. IF YOU CAN'T KEEP THE DEADLINES

This is the production schedule that was created for our P1: We Don't Talk Anymore.