Ancillary Task Secondary Research

ALBUM COVER/DIGIPAK RESEARCH:

http://abigailpaceyamvcmedia28.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/the-iconography-of-the-album-cover-media-magazine-article/

This SlideShare Presentation includes photocopies of an article based on The Iconography of Album Artwork from MediaMagazine (September 2012) [written by Christopher Budd]:

The Iconography of the Album Cover from Belinda Raji

From the article I have learnt that album artwork should not only be eye-catching, but it should also portray a message about the musician and the music they produce. All elements of mise-en-scene are considered to be symbolic of the musician and the meaning behind their music.

I also know that the album artwork will be presented at a variety of different sizes depending on the format, such as small icons in iTunes, or thumbnails on the website, so the artwork I create should be identifiable and recognisable from various distances (Artistic Abode).

Bill Smith is an album cover designer, and he said in an interview with Arkade (a UK-based independent music company),

"ARKADE: Do you have any advice for bands on how to choose a successful design?

BILL: The simplest ideas are the best, try and come up with an idea and stick to it and try not to get leant on by anyone to change or modify your ideas."

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To help me start to create designs for my Digipak I have begun to look at the most iconic and famous album artwork designs of all time, to try and get myself some inspiration, and to begin to identify what makes a 'good' album cover.

#1 according to musicradar.com is Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon:

For this album, Richard Wright instructed the designers to make the album cover  "smarter, neater—more classy" in comparison to the band's other albums. The design was constructed under three rules; the requirement from Richard for a 'bold and classy" design, the prism represented the band's love for lighting effects on stage and to represent the album's lyrics. I personally like the use of bold, contrasting colours in this artwork as it really makes it stand out from any other albums on the market. I also think that the concept is really strong and perfectly reflects the requirements for this album.

#2 is Nirvana's album 'Nevermind' which features a naked baby swimming after a dollar bill which is attached to a fish hook.

 People assume that because of the obscurity of this artwork there is a deep metaphor behind it, but the idea actually originated when Kurt Cobain watched a documentary on home water births. It is however the obscurity of the imagery on this album cover which makes it so infamous - but we don't really understand why. It is nevertheless a brilliant, award-winning album, but the artwork itself is what ensures that generation after generation of audiences know and identify the album.

From this I can see the real importance of a successful album cover- it needs to be eye-catching but it should be relevant to the musician and the songs itself to really make an impact on sales. I will now have to research further into the planning that goes behind creating album covers to fully understand the importance of aspects such as fonts, layout etc.

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http://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/05/02/example-musician-websites/

Stephanie Hamilton, a freelance website designer who holds a degree in Graphic Design, write for the blog The Daily Egg (conversion optimisation, design and copywriting tips) has written an article on her opinion of the top 20 musician websites which keep audiences engaged and what she believes is needed within the design process.

She believes that a good musician's website should include:

• latest news
• upcoming shows and events
• blog content and social networking
• merchandise/store
• media in the form of pictures, videos etc.
• story/bio
• community forum/subscription service
• mailing list/newsletter service

Looking at the top 20 Stephanie has chosen for us, many of them I don't recognise because she is American, which makes this research unreliable for me as I cannot relate to the examples. However, just by analysing some of the images of the websites, I can automatically tell some of the genres of music that they are - even without knowing the musicians - which I might be able to relate to my own work. 

Her #5 is Francesca Battistelli, an artist who I don't personally know, but from research she is a fairly low-key singer-songrwiter from the States, which kind of matches my chosen artist Ed Sheeran, as he too is a singer-songwriter, so they are of fairly similar genres.

Stephanie has placed this website quite close to the top in her top 20 as the type of styling - the colours and the illustration techniques - perfectly symbolises the simplicity of the artist's music genre. She also finds that the colour scheme is warm and inviting whilst still indicating the music genre. Social networking plays a big part of music marketing in today's society, so the inclusion of such links on the home page is a massive 'YES' from Stephanie.

The Importance of Release Dates

Why is the release date important?

The release date of a musician's single and/or music video is crucial in the success of the song's performance in the charts.

The musician and the record label will usually discuss with each other what single is to be released next off of the musician's album. Once the song is selected, they will then discuss when the most appropriate time to release the song. Dependant on the genre of the song, this could be affected by a series of factors. Firstly, it depends on if the song is seasonal all not. Typical Love Songs are more likely to be released around Valentine's Day and Festive Songs, Hymns or Carols will be released within the run-up to Christmas. This is because record labels know there is going to be demand for the song. 

Simon Cowell plugs the prestige of winning the Christmas Number 1 Single off the back of the X Factor because he knows it is more likely to gain the musician success in the future = more money in his back pocket!

There is also the importance of competition to consider when releasing a song or music video. If you take a low-key, starting musician or band and release their song the same week as HUGE artists in the world right now such as One Direction or Lady Gaga, their impact on the chart is going to be minimal because the competition is just too high. 

The year is also split into four financial/sales quarters. The quarter which runs from October - December is the most competitive in the music industry as albums and CDs become popular for Christmas presents. Musicians are also in high-competition with each other to get the prestigious No1 Single over the Christmas Week/Weekend. There is also the race for the final No1 Single of the year and the highest sales for the entire year to consider.

Gotye and Kimbra gained the number 1 single of the year with 'Somebody That I Used To Know'

In comparison, January to March is the least competitive quarter in the year, and is the best time for new and upcoming artists to release their albums or singles. This is when the media are desperate to look for new talents to talk about for the rest of the year. However, with most consumers having a big spend over the Christmas period, the target audience are less likely to want to spend money on music during this period, having a negative impact on chart positions. It is also the time for New-Year Sales in all the shops, so while a new album or single will be sold at a regular, initial price, all of the competition will be priced lower if they have been on the market for a longer period of time, so they are likely to generate more sales. The two quarters between April and September are the 'festival' seasons, which is a popular time for collaborations, summer party songs and live recordings.

It is also vitally important to consider the target market. Pop bands for example will have a target audience of school and college students, therefore it would be unrealistic to release the song or album over the summer when everyone goes on holiday. Shorter holiday periods such as the Spring or October half-terms might work well as this can be a key time to schedule radio and TV appearances or small promo gigs for the target audiences to attend.

The correlation between release date of the single and the music video is quite strong too. The musician is likely to announce the next single first on social networking sites to create hype and excitement. They will then normally give them a release date for the song, to prepare for pre-sales. They will then create a count-down for the music video's upload on to YouTube as this will also get the target audience excited and ensure that the maximum predicted views are achieved on the first day. The music video, obviously including the song, will then get general audiences aware of the song, and by the time the song's release date comes about, more people are likely to buy it. It can often be a good month between the music video's upload and the single's actual release, bur it does prove effective.

Emeli Sande also saw repeat success after her #1 album and singles entered the charts again after her incredible performances at the London Olympics.

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My Coursework:

The problem with release dates in relation to my music video is that it will not be shown on the video itself, as this does not conform to real approaches in music-video release. However, sometimes music channels will release special programmes which feature specific music videos. For example, in December, a lot of music channels will show only Christmas music videos, and therefore they will often also feature the release date of the song at the start of the footage to remind viewers when the song first came out. 

Whilst I won't include a credits in my music video, it will be important for me to consider the release date of the video and the song separately as I may have to include this in my ancillary products, especially on the website, as this is a common feature seen in real examples. The musician or band will often heavily promote the release date of the song or video to their fans to create hype, and ensure that maximum views/downloads are achieved on the first day. 

Justin Timberlake used a countdown on his website to promote the release date of his new album, something which I will use in my coursework.

Music Video History

VIRAL VIDEOS:

• A viral video is a video that becomes popular through means of internet sharing; particularly video sharing website, email and social networking.
• The technique of viral marketing is often heavily helped by the use of word-of-mouth also. It is like a 'snowball' effect, once one person has seen or liked a video, they then pass on the information to other people, and then they do the same, and so the hype and the popularity of the video increasingly becomes bigger and bigger. 
• Viral videos don't necessarily have to be music videos, they may be comedy/spoof - related or may even be live footage of big eyewitness events. 
• The use of media, technology, and most of all, the internet is essential in helping modern artists, musicians or bands to gain interest and popularity.
• Pop stars such as Justin Bieber and Esme Denters launched their career by releasing footage of themselves singing on to YouTube. Once someone had seen a 'talent' in these videos, the views of such videos quickly spread as the videos were shared, and so launched the likes of these artists into a successful career in the music industry. 

Justin Bieber's mum posted this video of him singing at a competition on YouTube. He sang the song 'So Sick' by Ne-Yo. When he was just 13, the video was accidentally clicked on by big American talent manager Scooter Braun, but he was impressed and contacted the singer's mother. She agreed for Justin to fly to America with Scooter where he recorded some demo tapes. He was then signed up to R&B singer Usher and Scooters joint record label Raymond Braun Media Group. Bieber, now 19, has more than 47 MILLION followers on Twitter, 3 studio albums, 4 compilation albums, 29 singles and 24 music videos, yet interestingly, only one of his singles have reached the #1 position in either the US or UK charts.

Do We Watch Music Videos For The Music Or For The Video Itself?

The biggest question to ask is whether we actually watch music videos because we like to listen to the music, or is it because of the 'virality' of the footage.

Every year some of the most weird and wonderful musicians of our generation create music videos which go 'viral', essentially performing so well even before the single's release, but this often drives sales and ensures the song reaches the top of the charts.

NAME THE SONG:

 

All of the above videos are so easily recognisable because they were classed as viral. 

How does a music video go viral?

• A video will go viral after it reaches millions, or billions (or more) of views after the link is continuously forwarded on to other people.
• Rosanna E. Guadagno of America's National Science Foundation, conducted research on to how music videos go viral. 
• She suggested that videos are more likely to go viral depending on the emotion provoked by the clip.
• She recruited 256 university study to watch one of ten hits on YouTube. She then asked them how they felt and whether they planned to forward the video to others.
• They developed the 'arousal hierarchy' where videos provoking positive emotions were placed at the top, and videos provoking negative emotions were placed near the bottom of the hierarchy. 
• Videos which provoke alertness or attentiveness are placed in the middle.

Music Videos and Titles/Texts (Credits)

These are two examples of short videos that I created using LiveType to practice creating titles for my coursework piece. Because I am creating a music video, I am unlikely to want to include titles in my music video as the vast majority of them do not include them, so I want to be able to stick to conventions. However, there is a small percentage of music videos which may include minor titles such as the Song Title and the musician's name at the very start of the footage, or the record label's name presented at the very end of the footage. Titles don't take very long to create for a video, so to be able to show off my skill in creating titles (if I do not include them within my music video), there is a set of rules followed by MTV for music videos which are titles simply added on to the start of the actual footage, so I may create a 'second video' if you like, specifically for MTV.

With the first Text Trial Video, I experimented with the positioning of the text most of all. This is a very similar text-layout to how MTV show videos, with the title of the song and the artist in the bottom left corner, and then the record company in the centre of the screen after the footage has finished playing. The backgrounds I used aren't really relevant as this wouldn't ordinarily be shown in the video, it would either be a black screen or the music video footage itself, but just to show as an example, I used an orange background as this is a colour which acts as a representative or a trait of my chosen artist.

With the second video, I experimented with font styles more. I wouldn't realistically use anything but a standard font such as Arial, but I just wanted to play with other, more interesting fonts which might relate to the topic of my video. I like the font that I used as it relates to the theme of the song 'Autumn Leaves' but it just doesn't look professional for the titles of my music video, so I definitely won't be using it. However, this is potentially I type of font I could look at using within my ancillary products.

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There are few music videos on the market which include titles/text, but I am choosing not to include them in mine because I feel that are not appropriate for my genre. The music videos I have seen which do include text/titles all tend to be either pop, dance or urban genres, and are used to highlight specific words in the lyrics to allow viewers to learn the words.

The first video is by David Guetta featuring Rihanna. The song complies to the dance/urban genre and includes titles throughout as the video has been directed in a feature-film style, including the production company and 'actors' names at the start of the video. The titles work because they match in with the music which is fast paced. The style of the text is quite fun and bold, and easily suits the sci-fi theme which has been applied to the video's content. It gives the video a fun characteristic which would attract the target audience here of about 16 - 24 year olds, particularly the older segment who go to parties, clubs etc. Arguably, the text may also be used because in some scenarios, listeners may find it difficult to hear certain words sung by Rihanna due to the mixing of the audio - thus, these titles will allow viewers to learn more of the correct lyrics. This is an extremely rare setup for a music video, as most don't even identify the production company, let alone produce a fully-animated logo for the opening sequence. However, it does work for this music video because of the themes within the footage and the genre of the music, and it also allows it to stand out from others, making it unique. Like stated before, with my music video which will have very soft, calm tones and themes, titles like these would not be suitable for the target audience. If I were to include text like within this video, I would perhaps have the production company listed in the credits at the end of the video, rather than the start, as for me, this is not an important feature of the video, and so should ideally be seen last after the actual music content. 

Another example I found was actually by the same artist. This video is for Rihanna's song 'Rude Boy,' which is another example of the pop/urban/dance mixed-genre of music. The music video itself is a hybrid of narrative, with Rihanna seen playing the drums, and conceptual, with Rihanna again acting out various scenes which make very little sense whatsoever, or more so that they do not conform to a typical Todorov narrative structure. Unlike in the first video where the titles where edited on after production, in this video the text is actually incorporated into the physical filming of the footage, with the words often appearing in big, bold and colourful fonts behind the singer as she 'acts'. This works with this video because the overall theme for this video is an over-the-top style cartoon, with lots of random animations and block colours. Only specific words are shown as titles/texts, as the requirement here is to emphasise those specific words to the audience, these include phrases such as 'BOOM', 'BOY' and 'WANT.' Again this style of text would not work with my music video, as much as I want the meaning of the lyrics to be the focus of the video. The animation and style of the fonts are just too loud and over-the-top for my chosen genre of music, whereas I would need something quite plain and simple. There are very few, if any, examples of music videos of my genre of acoustic/indie/folk with text or titles applied to them, which is why I am going to conform to this and not include any within mine.

I did, however, find an example of an indie/folk music video, which contained some text. Mumford and Son's 'The Cave' contains an example of some titles. At the very start of the video, before the music kicks in, is a scene where the artists act out a little scene. They are riding on motorbikes when they come across some natives to the island. One of the musicians then comes forward and talks to the natives in their home language. For the purpose of the viewers needing to understand what he says, they use subtitles as text. Although this may not be specific to the genre, they are essential for this particular music video for viewers to understand the general plot of the narrative within the video, However, the text does conform to that of the genre by using a simply white Sans Serif font, which complies to the simplicity of the music itself. What is becoming increasingly more common in all genres of music video is a credits screen at the very end, simply showing the year of publication and the record label's name, which is something I will probably include in my video.

Secondary Research

Correlation Between Music Video Success and Single Sales:

This is a graph of results I collated in Excel. I looked at iTunes for single downloads and 4Music for Music Video downloads to see the correlation between the success of the actual single and it's music video. I chose iTunes because my initial questionnaire results showed that the majority used this to download and purchase singles over all other choices. I then chose 4Music for the music videos as the majority again from my initial questionnaire said this is where they are most likely to view music videos. I also collected results from the 'hits' received for the videos on YouTube and I looked for a correlation between the three results to determine whether the music video can have an effect on the success of the song or the musician.

Results collected: 8th November 2013

The numbers along the X-axis represent the ten singles I have evaluated, based on the Singles Chart Position.
1. Look Right Through (MK Remix) - Storm Queen
2. Move - Little Mix
3. I See Fire - Ed Sheeran
4. Royals - Lorde
5. Story of My Life - One Direction
6. Counting Stars - OneRepublic
7. Afterglow - Wilkinson
8. Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat (feat. Beardyman) [Calvin Harris Remix] - Fatboy Slim & Riva Starr
9. Wrecking Ball - Miley Cyrus
10. Hold On, We're Going Home (feat. Majid Jordan) - Drake

The numbers up the Y-axis represents the rating of 1-10 I then gave each song based on the two other categories: YouTube hits and 4Music Video Chart position, with 1 being the highest and 10 being the lowest.

The results which are of most importance to me here are the middle songs, as these have more correlation between the three different categories more-so than the songs at the top and the bottom of the iTunes top 10 chart. Songs 4, 5, 6 and 7 all have their peaks quite close together on the graph above, suggesting that for every purchase of the song, the video has also been watched at least once. This may also suggest with these songs in particular, the more that the video is watched, the more the song will sell, or in reverse, the more the song sells, the more inclined consumers may be to watch the video, and in future weeks, these songs may well just rise in the charts.

However, at the start of this week (11.11.13), the chart position has changed more drastically, but this arguably is due to the release of various brand new songs this week.

Royals - Lorde has now dropped from #4 to #6
Story of My Life - One Direction has now dropped from #5 to #9
Counting Stars - OneRepublic is no longer in the iTunes top 10
Afterglow - Wilkinson is no longer in the iTunes top 10.

When new songs are released, they are marketed in a way to ensure that the surge of sales come at the introduction stage. A song's release is much like any other product and follows the product lifecycle:

The development stage is where the research comes into place, and where the song will also be produced. The record label will decide when the song is going to be released and how - which is where the music video comes into place.
Introduction - the music video and the song will be released, and then sales will see a rapid growth. Maturity is where the song levels out in the charts, sales won't decrease dramatically, nor will they increase dramatically, until when people decide they've had enough of the song, or a new song is released, when it reaches the decline stage.

John Lewis Example:
The release of a new song is vital, especially in terms of marketing. The video and the release for a song is crucial for drawing in sales and capturing the target audience. One of the biggest examples of a well-marketed new-release song from this week's chart (11.11.13) is Lily Allen's cover of Keane's Somewhere Only We Know, which shot straight up to #2 replacing Little Mix's song Move. Although not a music video as such, the songs released for the John Lewis Christmas adverts all do relatively well in the charts because the videos for them are so successful. The 2013 Christmas advert debuted during the ad-break for Saturday's X Factor, as this audience is a prime target for the advert. The footage then used for the advert has been designed and created specifically to connect with the target audience; using techniques to sympathise with the audience and tug on the heart-strings. From this example, I have really learnt that a successful and memorable video means for more single sales. In the table below, I have complied a list of the last six John Lewis Christmas adverts, the success of the video in terms of YouTube hits and the success of the single. The later years clearly are having more success due to the increase and development of media and technology, as for example, YouTube is becoming increasingly more popular, and they can also be shared via other formats of social media through the click of a button such as Twitter and Facebook. Therefore, the use of media and technology is vitally important in my 'release' of my music video, as they are key to gaining views and sales in the music industry.

On the 12th of November, 2012, The Metro stated that;