Research: CD Covers

This section of the criteria requires the research of album cover designs, for us to be able to design our own one for our chosen artist. I have decided to look at 3 different CD covers by various artists to give me an idea of what is required for our own. 


The first album cover I decided to look at is by T.I - Paper Trails. Even though this album by the famous American rapper was released back in 2008 (just over 4 years ago), it has stuck in my mind, which is what a successful piece of art work does, it captures the visual creative before the music is even heard, and I aim to try and achieve this for our own album cover for The Script. 


  


As you can see the front of the album cover has the artist's (T.I's) face on the front - this gives the audience facial recognition of the artist along with the text. Also the title "Paper Trails" is merged with the cover its self and the album cover is made from different segments of paper (from various sizes and colours) to make the face and also the background for the album cover. because there is so much going on within the album cover, keeping the text simple is what I personally would have done because it compliments the art work well. The back cover consists of the track listings that have been done in "Type-writer" font and again this emphasises the point about having a paper background. Along with the album track listing, the bar-code is also seen, along with the Copyrights to the art work and the record label. 


Moving away from the hip-hop scene I looked more into more Indie styled music, and for this I turned to "Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worst Nightmare". This is a more subtle approach for the art work, because its supposed to represent the style of music that the band is creating. 


 


This album cover, unlike the previous one uses colour to help lure the creativity of the audience, but both album covers use the title to represent the art work being displayed. For example here the majority of the album cover is in gray scale (which indicated night time) and the windows are full of bright colours (which are the opposite of nightmares which are usually more darker, sinister colours). If you look closely you can see that the shapes inside the windows are all round (bouncy) opposing the thoughts of it being a nightmare. The back cover is what has grabbed me personally, because the traditional way of viewing the track listings is in a list descending own the page, where as here the titles for each track are found near the bottom (where the bar-code, record label and copyrights are displayed) and the go from left to right with a huge gap between each song. 


The final album cover that I shall be looking at is from the drum and bass genre and the chosen artist/band being "Pendulum - In Silico". All of Pendulum's albums are very vibrant and they have to be to, again, represent the genre of music. 


This album cover is alive with colours, giving off very vibrant tones which are then given and outer glow to make them stand out even more. This album cover has a double meaning to what you (the audience) can see. At first glance you may think that the image is displaying a very colourful speaker backed onto a circuit board. However, if you look closely the center of the "speaker" contains an "embryo/featus", and the circuitry is actually individual "sperm cells", making the "speaker" the "egg", and yet again this is what the title relates to, even the song titles relate to what the album cover represents if you take your time in unraveling the artwork. Same with the 2 previous album covers the record label and copyrights are located on the bottom, however this version of the album does not contain a bar-code. 


In conclusion to looking at the 3 album covers, it is important to make sure that when designing the album cover we make sure that it is eye-catching to make it more memorable for the audience. We need to make it different to other album covers, but yet similar so that people understand whats going on, but it is different to the generic layouts. 


Written By Tyrone. 

Research: Websites

Part of the criteria we have to meet involves the creation of a website.  In order to know what to contain in the website, I have decided to conduct research looking into them, as this will aid me in the creation of our own. The websites I looked at were those of current industry-leading artists.


The first website I looked at was that of 'Arctic Monkeys'. When looking at their website, I realised that the navigation system was located at the top, with all the pages listed in order. One page that stuck out in particular was the 'photos' page (first image below), which contained a various amount of images from all different things associated with the band, the purpose of which is to give the viewers the opportunity to engage with the band in an interactive way and see pictures of past events, e.g. gigs, to which they can relate and possibly save/use. Another page, which heightens the use of multimedia features and user interactivity, was the 'videos' page (second image); this gives the users the ability to view videos in their primary source, and saves them having to go to external sources, e.g. YouTube, to view videos associated with the artist that they want to view. The last image below shows a part of the website that displays all of the upcoming gig dates of the band. This, as with the videos, gives the users the information they require/want to know on the website and deteriorates the need to get this information elsewhere. Another thing that stuck out was the use of black text on a very light colour background - the two colours compliment each other extremely well, and the size and style (as well as the colour) of some of the text makes it sharp and catches the attention of the users quickly.

The second website I looked at was that of Taio Cruz, and this one differs highly to the one above. As the two images below demonstrate, a heavy use of various colours has been used which could either draw the users into the website, or disturb them from it. The home page of this one (first image) contains a lot of content, in that it has links to the other pages and shows samples of what can be found of them, thus giving the users a feel for the website and allows them to see what it contains. Also, it gives the users the option to purchase the artist's latest song from iTunes, which is very user-friendly and could potentially make the users want to return to the website in future. The second image is the 'about' page, another way in which this website differs from the above. This page provides the user with information about the artist, which is beneficial particularly to users that haven't heard of the artist or don't know much about him.

The third and final website I looked at was that of 'The Courteeners'. This website is similar to both of the websites, firstly in the way that it makes use of a black and white colour scheme, and both colours go very well together. The links are again displayed at the top of the page, and samples of what can be found on these pages is shown on the home page, with which a connection to Taio Cruz's website above can be made. Further similarities to the above two can be seen in the about page - as with Taio Cruz, this provides the users with information about the artist; not exactly necessary, but it supports the artist's image and gives the website a bit of bulk. Also the use of a video page is similar to that of the Arctic Monkeys which, again, allows the users to view the videos whilst on the website instead of having to navigate to another website.

From looking at all the above, it is clear to see that the most common features on websites of an artist are a gallery, an 'about' section, and videos. It is also evident that black and white are very commonly used colours, and having conducted this research, we as a group now have a clearer idea on what to include on the website - a page about the band, a gallery page, and a video page being the main features, as well as a thorough and consistent house-style that will draw users' attention. All of the above artists are listened to greatly by teenagers, our target audience, and we now know what we will have to do in order to first of all capture, and then maintain, the needs of the target audience when they are on the website. 

Written by Jack.

Research: Interviews

The above video shows the interviews we conducted to aid us in the creation of the project.

Written by Jack.

Research: Music Video Proposal

The main aim for our music video is to make our audience watch the music video which is the aim for all videos. We are going to stick to a narrative storyline and a range of other elements which will make the audience want to repeatedly watch the video as they enjoy the video and to see the different elements we do include.


The storyline will be of a man reminiscing the past with his ex-girlfriend and then openly proclaims the love he still has for her. He then goes to the place they first met in hope she will turn up so they can re-kindle the love they once had. She goes there towards the end, however he is not there due to being forced to leave by the previously seen policeman, and his wanting to re-kindle the past is ongoing.


The video is going to include the use of a green screen and the use of slow motion, fades to white or black and adjustments to the colour and volume, these effects should make the video more interesting. There will be different mise en scene in the video including normal/casual every day clothing for the man and the girl, a police outfit, cameras and microphones, a heart ornament, a picture of the couple when they were together, money, a rucksack/sleeping bag, a varety of different camera shots and angles and a mixture of high and low key lighting. The possible locations where we will film our music video are a street, park and house. These are all easily accessable areas for the group.


Using all the mise en scene and music video motifs should hopefully allow us to fulfill our requirements for the music video and make the audience want to keep watching it.


Written by Elliott.

Research: Music Copyright Permission

Research: Today, i wrote to the Sony music entertainment corporation, requesting permission to sample and use their artist's 'The Script' music in our promotional package music video.

"Hi,

I am a student currently undertaking A level Media studies. I would like to ask for your help concerning our current coursework project. The project is a promotional package for a selected music artist. The main reason i am writing, is to request your permission to sample your label's band 'The Script'. The package is solely for educational purposes and no financial benefit will be made by the project."

The above, in quotes is the letter of request  i wrote to Sony music corporation about sampling 'The Script' music. In the letter, i had to explain my reasoning behind sampling their artists music. An explanation had to be given so they would not jump to unwarranted conclusions and believe we were using their artists material for reasons such as copyright infringement. If the company believed we were looking to make financial gain, they would decline our request to sample their music, so the explanation is of great importance.

This print screen shows that the letter to Sony music corporation has been sent and we as a group are now waiting for a response.

Written by Sid.

Research: Podcast - Summary Of Research

This is a podcast in which we summarise all of the research we conducted. We took it in turns to discuss the topics that we individually focused on during the researched, and brought it all together as a group within this video. We also explored how this research would be of an advantage during our project.

Written by Jack.

Research: Further Information About The Artist ('The Script')

The Script albums blog post

The Script has released 2 albums which have gone mainstream. The first being called ‘The Script’ and the second called ‘Science and faith’. The first album was released in 2008 and the second and most recent was released in 2010. The chart below shows where ‘Science and Faith’ peaked all over the world in the album charts, reaching number 1 in Ireland, Scotland and UK and 2^nd in Australia. It also had top 10 peak positions in Canada, the European top 100 and the US billboard.

Chart (2010–11)	Peak position
Australian Albums Chart	2
Austrian Albums Chart	70
Belgian Albums Chart (Flanders)	47
Belgian Albums Chart (Wallonia)	70
Canadian Albums Chart	6
Danish Albums Chart	23
Dutch Albums Chart	14
European Top 100 Albums	5
German Albums Chart	40
Irish Albums Chart	1
Italian Albums Chart	40
New Zealand Albums Chart	15
Scottish Albums Chart	1
Spanish Albums Chart	58
Swedish Albums Chart	52
Swiss Albums Chart	15
UK Albums Chart	1
US Billboard 200	3

This chart here shows the most listened to songs from both albums in the space of a week. The results are from ‘last fm’. The most listened to record was ‘Breakeven’ which was from the first album ‘The Script’ which was released back in 2008. It was played over 7,200 times. The second most listened to song was ‘The man who can’t be moved’ which had over 6,300 listens and also came from the same album. This must mean that the first album was more popular or that people haven’t been able to affiliate themselves with the newer album yet. 

The chart below is very similar however it has taken the results over the space of 6 months rather than a week. However the top 3 are all the same just with many more views as ‘Breakeven’ has been listened to over 86,000 times.

Written by Elliott.

Research: Pop Rock As A Genre

‘Pop rock’ will come under the genre 'alternative'. We are deciding to focus on this genre and try and get it to gain popularity as a genre of its own. To do so, we will attract the audience by incorporating aspects of pop, as that is the third most popular genre. As you can see from the chart, that even though pop/ alternative had decreased in sales between the years 2006 to 2007, it was still the third most heavily selling genre of music in the industry itself. This data gives us more confidence when trying to market this specific genre. From this table you can see that Alternative/pop rock is the third best selling genre of the years 2006/2007. From this, as a media organisation we can invest in this genre as the genre is already a secure one in the music industry. It's a worthy risk to take, as the genre has already proven to be popular and has sold well in the past.

I am researching into as much demographic data as i can to see how the sales of the genre Pop/Rock has decreased or increased over the past 10 years or so. The reason for researching into the demographic data is so we can envisage as a group how well the genre of music we are trying to market is going to sell.

This next table lists the 10 most popular genres taken from the online survey at the website 'eternaltreasures.com/ top10mostpopularmsuicgenresbasedonsalesofsinglesalbumsandmusicvideos'. As aforementioned we as a group are looking for a music artist in the genre of pop/rock. We will be confident after seeing this table as both 'pop' and 'rock' are in the top ten in the top ten most popular genres. This survey was taken in 2008 which shows that for 3 years running pop/rock was in the top three best selling genres in the music industry. This table, like the last will increase our interest to invest in the genre as the potential for success is very high in comparison to other poorer selling genres.

This table is taken from the results of an online poll. Again, pop-rock isn’t specified as a genre, so it would come under ‘other’ which is the most preferred music genre from this sample of people. As you can see other( pop/rock) is in a table with many other established genres of the music industry, yet as part of the percentage 'other' you can see it is in the highest percentage out of them all. As a group trying to market pop/genre therefore it is excellent to see how popular these tables are showing pop/rock to be, as it means an investment into a band or group in that genre will be a calculated risk, with the likelihood of success being good odds in comparison to other genres.

The next screen shot is a table that shows the number of fans for a variety of genres of music on the most popular social network site, Facebook. It shows how popular each genre is and how much the difference in number of fans have changed in the past 6 months. Pop rock is within top ten, at number 4 in a table which consists of over 50 genres. Firstly in a marketing sense this table is positive as it shows how pop/rock is an established genre in the music industry, so if invested in, the likelihood of success is higher than 45 other genres. Secondly you can see that in the last 6 months the percentage of fans of pop/rock has rose the least, which investing wise gives an incentive to revamp pop/rock by positively marketing an artist in that genre. It gives an incentive to invest as it is still the fourth most popular genre and hasn't been doing well, but with a decent marketing strategy, may be able to rise into the top three or more again. From further analysis of the table we can see that reggae has rose the most in popularity over the last 6 months. As a marketing ploy therefore we maybe could look to add elements of the reggae genre into a pop/rock music video of an artist we are studying to see whether it heightens the percentage of popularity in pop/rock.

Written by Sid. 

Research: Information About The Artist ('The Script')

After looking at the preferred artist that the group wanted to do, the next step was to begin looking at the demographic and statistical data for the artist. Below will be a series of charts showing different types of data collected. 

This is a map showing where all the fans are from (those that are fans via a social networking site) and as it is shown, the majority of fans are from Europe and America (mainly the east coast). Which is to be expected since America has over a quarter of the media industry.

This is a chart showing the number of fans originating from each city. London, Dublin and LA are the 3 top highest scoring number of fans, this then backs up the world map that indicated where people are listening to the artist. Dublin is at 2nd place because this is where the group originate from, therefore it is likely that they will be supported by their own. 


These statistics (below) show the total views by people. As you can see, the total amount of plays is 43,781,930. And last week alone there were 135,392. That's 19,341 views per day. The total amount of video views was 43,710,492. With 11,662 views last week, averaging 1,666 views per day.

This chart shows the number of plays via a social network. But it also shows the amount of fans via a social network. As shown, MySpace has the top number of plays at 30,703,630 and a total number of 96,398 fans. However, this information was back when the target audience used MySpace, and during the same time period was the release of the song.  However times have changed and the target audience (Teens) have now moved onto the use of Facebook as a main social networking site. 

This chart now shows how the increase in popularity over Facebook has caused a dramatic decrease for the use of MySpace. Facebook has a total of 2.4 million listed fans for the script whereas Myspace is still the same at just over 96,000 fans. So the increase in popularity of a social networking site is a key factor to consider when releasing  a video due to where people are more likely to view/listen to the music video. 

This chart just shows the increase in fans via Facebook. Its a more detailed view of the chart above. And in the past year it is possible to see a steady increase in the amount of fans, then suddenly in the summer months, there are huge spikes in the amount of views and plays, and this is due to the concerts, VMA's and other awards that take place during the summer, people wish  to investigate who they are and what songs they have, so this needs to be taken into consideration when researching this information. 

These next 2 charts, show the amount of plays in the last year. The first is the amount of plays via Youtube, and the other chart is statistical information via Last.Fm (this is an add on feature that is also available to Xbox 360 owners). This again backs up the huge spike for the summer months, because during the same time period, on both charts there is a sudden spike in the amount of plays/views of the artist. 

Written By Tyrone. 

Research: Accessibility Of Music

Most teenagers nowadays are not regular listeners to radio. They might occasionally listen to it when in the car, or to find out the current top 40 chart. The main reason they do listen to it is evidently for the music, but with online sites streaming music for free, they don’t tend to bother listening to the radio, because services such as YouTube and Last FM allow them to choose the songs that want to listen to as a pose to having to listen to what the radio presenter/DJ chooses to play – they are able to provide their own playlists.


Also, teenagers are shamingly very reluctant to pay for music, with many, if not most, of them having hardly ever bought a CD. A large majority of the teenage population download music illegally from file sharing sites on the internet. Legal ways to get free music that are used by teenagers are the radio as aforementioned, TV channels (although these aren’t very popular because the music is often played at certain times, which is not always at the time the teenagers are watching), and legit websites. iTunes is extremely popular, and is the most popular legal way of obtaining music. It is used in conjuction with the iPod, however, it involves actually buying the songs, so again, more people tend to illegally obtain their music than do so in this way.


Many teenagers like to have a 'hard copy' of the song (a file that they can keep on their computer and use at will) so that they can transfer it to portable music players and share it with friends – however, with the rapidly growing usage of illegal download, purchase of CD’s is in a major state of decline. Music players such as iPod’s, mp3 players, portable cd players, mobile phones etc. are all methods that are popularly used in order for people to access music whilst they are on the move. Hard copies of songs are often bought in shops as either vinyl or CD's, which is another method of accessing music which has been around for many years.


Below are some charts that show behavioural trends in terms of accessing music (and the people who access it).

Written by Jack.

Research: Conducting A Survey

To be able to select an artist, as a group, a survey needed to be devised to be able to select an artist. Below will be an analyses of the information gathered from the survey that was published via Facebook. Be looking at the information we shall be able to make a group decision on which artist we wish to make the music video for. The survey was completed by 15 people, and looking at their responses will give us a clearer idea on which artist to pursue.


The first question, and obvious choice, was to find out what genre of music people liked to listen to the most. Below is a table showing all the information gathered.  As shown below a third of the people that participated said that Indie was their favorite genre, with Pop and Metal taking second place. 

The next question was more to focus on the participants favorite artist with an explanation to why they chose that artist.  Arctic Monkeys seemed to be the favorite band with 3 people saying that the band was their favorite because their music doesn't get boring, and they're music seems to bring in something new and exciting. However, 2 people said that they preferred Coldplay because their music varies in mood. So this backs up the evidence of Indie having 5 people say it's their favorite genre. 

The next question was to find out what people prefer to see in music videos. The options given where set out in a matrix with Violence, Materialism, Nudity and Controversy . From looking at the results 85% of people said that they like to see Materialism show in music videos. This means that our music video needs to include a majority of materialism to attract the viewers attention. 

The next question was whether the viewer liked to see a narrative to the story or just dancing. after looking at the results, it is clear that a narrative is preferred where 93.3% (14 people) said yes, a narrative would be suitable. The reason for this, personally, is so that the viewer can lyrically and visually analyse the music video and work out the story behind it, and personally I think that it makes the song that more interesting if the viewer is able to comprehend whats going on. 

The next question was to ask the participants what brands they liked. This question is significant because when it comes to the production of the video you need to make the video aesthetically appealing to your audience, therefore selecting their brands and the brands they like, they'll make the video more compatible with their personal life. From looking at the results, Vans is top of the list with converse being second. These 2 are by far the most popular out of all the possibilities. 

The final question was which music video the participant found to be the greatest music video of all time to be. The video "A-Team" by Ed Sheeran, due to its narrative falls into place with question four about the story having narrative. "California Girls" by Katy Perry, due to its huge view on sweets and the mystical place of Candyland. "Don't Wanna' Go Home" by Jason Derulo, due to its "different dance sequences, camera angles and general atmosphere of the environment".

So  to conclude, from looking at this information, it is clear that the video needs to include a variety of camera shots and angles, to create an atmosphere for the viewer, it needs to be appealing to the viewer in the sense of materialistic items, and other non-everyday objects, and it also needs to contain a narrative for the easy understanding of the video by the audience. 

Written by Tyrone.