Mock Exam - Rosie

Social networking and online media hugely affects the music industry, having different sites such as SoundCloud, YouTube and Facebook allows a worldwide audience to consume music wherever they are in the world.

Beck is a DIY artist that is known through the use of social networking, without the use of digital distribution he would not be known. Beck creates all of his music himself, he writes sheet music and them posts them online, in order to get a response from his fan base, they make versions of his music and share them online. Social networking is extremely usefull in beck's case as he would not exist without it, he has a niche audience that are dedicated to him, he gained this through creating a relationship with them. Beck gets many different responses to his sheet music as he has so many different versions of the same piece he has many to chose from this allows him to pick the best one and put it out there as his own. This firstly allows the audience to feel apart of what he is doing and it also allows Beck to keep all of the profit he makes. Social networking has allowed Beck's music to be promoted easily, without these online sites beck's music wouldn't be out there, digital media is a simple way to be promoted and exchanged between fans. Beck is purely based on the internet and although he is growing and has started to do tours, he was born form the internet and digital distribution has allowed him to be apart in the music industry.

Prosumers gather online in order to find and create music, again without the use of digital distribution they would not be able to o what they do, Prosumers are much like Beck in a way that they would not be known without the use of social networking, prosumers wouldn't even be able to create their music without the use of social networking sites, the same as beck. Starting off as a unknown artist would be impossible without the use of social networking, having a online community allows you to share your music and get known. Dj Claudio High was a prosumer artist that me and my team created, we put together a variety of different music genres and produced a mash up, with this mash up we crated many different promotion sources for him such as twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Insagram and many more. As a new artist such as a prosumer digital distribution is vital, it not only allows the artist to get known and promoted but it allows the other procumers in the community or even fans to connect with the artist and share their work, social networking also allows the fans to give feedback which helps the artist grow an develop. Having such a small fan base to start with can be easily fixed with the use of social media and online technologies, using the internet can allow you to expand your audience and share your work worldwide.

Domino is a indie record label that are mainly based in London, they are purely based on music however they started to publish books as another form of promotion, this is known as synergy which used to be a vital way in which companies would get known and become popular, however as media technologies has developed this is no longer necessary. Indie labels such as Domino use many different online medias in order to promote the music, for example the Arctic Monkeys are singed by Domino and use many different social medias such as YouTube, Twitter and Last FM, looking online i found that the Arctic Monkeys had around 10 million views on YouTube, this shows that the internet and online media is very important and useful when it comes to consuming music. As indie labels are much smaller than the large major labels, they have a much smaller budget when it comes to promotion and distribution, Inide Labels use social media in order to et the music across as it is free and such a large scare audience can see it. Domino are quite similar to Beck and the prosumer case study as all three of them have a particularly small dedicated audience, social media allows them to get the music across easily and in exchange getting feedback, likes, comments and even promotion in return.

Major labels are slightly different than the indie, DIY and prosumers. Major labels have enough money to promote and distribute the music however they feel like. Major labels used to use, CD'S, posters, billboards and much more physical objects however as digital distribution and media technologies has developed the major labels have had to take part in the online promoting business. Major labels now use social networking in order to sell and distribute their music, for example the x-factor is part of a chain reaction, Sony who own Syco who take part in the x-factor all earn money from a simple show, having a show on tele which is promoted through social networking, the radio, Itunes and much more is  the way forward in the music industry. Having all the little conglomerates taking part in shows such as the x-factor brings the larger companies, The Big 4, money, promotion and distribution. One direction who came off from the x-factor is a prime example of the way the major labels have changed their marketing ways, One Direction have been extremely popular over the social networking sites and have over 10 million followers, each. One direction have also created their own online game and create short clips of themselves and post them online to sites such as YouTube. This is how the major labels now have to operate as the digital medias have taken over the music industry.

Although the major labels still dominate the music industry they are being forced to act and run more like the indie and DIY artist, as digital distribution has taken over the music industry, all music is now promoted and listened to online in some way and this is something everyone in the music industry is going to have to adapted to.

Exam Essay - Beck Vs X-factor

Translating the exam questions;

Question 1
Social networking is increasingly expanding and growing worldwide. How is this important for the music industry and new artists? How does this affect the procumers?

Question 2
Major labels take up a large section of the music industry, these labels promote and distribute there music / image to a worldwide community. To what extent do you agree with this?

Question 3
Popular songs rely on social networking and visual aspects to a certain procumer as much as they do to the actual mash up / music. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Question 4

Talk about the different problems that record company’s and artists may comes across when producing and exchanging their music, what issues may need to be looked at within the ownership of the track? 

   Exam;

   Beck Vs X-Factor

   Beck is a DIY artist who has made it by himself, he writes sheet music and leaves it up to his fans to interoperate it, some fans also make music videos for their own interpretation. Beck as a artist doesn't try to reach a large audience, Beck is unique and doesn't try to please everyone. Beck has a niche audience that are dedicated to him, as beck doesn't try to please everyone the small section of people who do appreciate and are dedicated to him stick by him as they don't get lost and stray away, the fans also feel like they have a connection with Beck, being in such a small community the fans feel apart of something. One of the main reasons some of the fans have such a good relationship towards Beck is because he plays their versions of the music, the audience can get involved and be apart of Beck's music. X-factor on the other hand is a talent show where you follow the contestant from the very beginning, many fans say this is why they feel so connected to the artists that become famous as a result from being on the show. The fans give feedback as to what is popular which allows each to contestant to either go home or stay and go through to the next round, the power of deciding who stays allows the audience to feel important and involved. Although X-factor and Beck have two completely different audiences they both rely on their own individual audience in order to survive in the music industry. Beck wouldn't be known unless it was for his fans, Beck wouldn't have so many versions of each song as less he had a dedicated fan base like he does. X-Factor needs the fans in order to give feedback and vote, without the participation of the audience the show would be nothing.

   Beck produces sheet music which he then passes over to his fans, they then translate the music to how they understand and imagine it to sound, some fans also produce music videos to go with the sound that they have produced. This gives Beck an opportunity to then pick the best most interesting sound that he thinks will sell. All of this put together is the different stages in the music industry, production, distribution and marketing and exchange. The traditional way in the music industry is to do all three of these stages one after the other, Beck has actually blended all of these different stages into one. The production of the music itself is a result of the exchange from beck and his fans, the distribution and marketing is also done within the fans. Although X-factor is nothing like Beck and has completely different practices, it has actually done the same thing as Beck and blended all the the different stages of the music industry together. Producing music and an image for the artist, x-factor is a well known show that distributes music the whole time it is airing, not only do you listen to the music every week on the tele but as soon as a contestant has finished a song it is automatically placed on the internet, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and many other sites. The exchanging process takes part every week, not only do they contestants receive votes form their fans but they are constantly receiving feedback over social networking sites. This shows that although X-factor and Beck are different in their own ways, they both are blending up the music industry.

   X-factor is a well known show that that is popular for the costumes, light shows and dancers, the whole show is based around the visual aspects. People reply on the visuals in order to be entertained, this is where Beck and X-factor and extremely different. Beck writes sheet music and leaves it up to his fans to do the rest, Beck doesn't use any lights or fancy videos in order to get his audience's attention. 

   Visualisation has been argued to devalue the music, comparing Beck and X-factor i would agree with this. X-factor is purely based on the visuals, with out them there would be no show, when watching the program all the attention is on the show not the music, the judges even comment if the contestants cant dance or the show wasn't 'entertaining' enough, I personally feel this is taking the whole purpose out of the show. X-factor is all about the scandals, rumours and publicity, some of the people that get through on the x-factor cant even sing they are on there purely for the entertainment. X-factor devalues music and there is no arguing against it. Beck on the other hand is all about the music, you can see that the only reason Beck writes the music is because he is passionate about it, Beck doesn't use any fancy visuals or shock scandals in order to get liked, he simply writes music that he thinks is interesting and will be liked and played by his fans.

Dj Claudio High Case Study

Digital media technology continues to develop. How is this significant for media institutions and audiences?

Starting off as a new unsigned artist would be extremely hard without the use of digital media. Digital media had developed over time and is now popular with many different people all over the world. Having such a large community online allows audiences to find and connect with artists that they like or aspire to be like. Dj Claudio High was an artist that was created by my procumer group and me; in order to promote our artist and the mash-up we used social networking. As nobody knew our artist digital media was extremely significant to us here, as we had to market Dj Claudio High as best we could. Using Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud, Instagram, Tumblr and MySpace we created a relationship with our audience; we followed people who we thought would have an interest in the artist, we also followed other artists and lastly we followed Dj Claudio High ourselves in order to get him connected with our friends and family. Posting regularly and sharing links to the video helped us get more views and likes; this helped our artist get better known and popular. Using the different sites we gained, 12 followers in the first 2 hours of creating the account, we received 252 views, 1 positive comment and 7 likes on the music itself and we achieved all of this using social networking. Social media has allowed us to get a new artist across to the worldwide web and this would not be possible without the digital media technologies!

Social media not only allows new artists to get known and promoted but it allows the audience to connect with the artist and get involved. Social networking is full of procumers re-creating and coving songs and dances that inspirer them, with the help of these procumers artist songs get known through out the world, this occurs by one simple song/video going vial. Digital media technology is not only good for media institutions, the audience benefit from social media developing as well, with all the different social networking sites that are now available audiences can always find something new and interesting that they can explore. Audiences that like to find their own music and look into new music rely on social media greatly, without all the different social networking sites and communication ways procumers wouldn’t be able to find these new artist. Social media then allows the audience to promote the artist themselves, by the use of ‘trending’ and other methods such as ‘following’ or ‘subscribing’.

Over all the fact that digital media technologies are developing is a huge help to not only the media institutions but the audiences as well. Digital media allows new artists to get known and popular, it allows audiences to get involved and find new artists.

“Global institutions dominate media production; these institutions sell their products and services to national audiences.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Major record labels dominant the media production, using their large institutions they can promote and market their music and artists worldwide. I agree that the major labels such as Universal, Warner and Sony dominate the media world, however with digital media technologies developing indie labels are given a chance to promote their media just as much.

The artist I create din my group was able to get promoted world wide, using social networking such as Twitter, YouTube and MySpace, Dj Claudio High can be seen and heard by any audience anywhere in the world. As it stands at the moment the major labels are dominate however I believe with this development occurring allows indie labels and independent artists to get themselves known and become known worldwide. Through out time I personally believe indie labels will rise and become dominate, my reason for this is looking at viral videos such as Gangman Style and Harlem Shake, these videos become popular worldwide just from the use of social networking. Applying for YouTube, Twitter and other social networking sites is so easy and its free, with the use of trending and popular sites there is hope that any independent artist, such as Dj Claudio High, can make it on there own to national audiences.

“Successful media products depend as much upon marketing and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Creating a good, interesting mash up is extremely important in order grab the audience that you are trying sell to, however from researching different examples and carrying out my own research into the artist I had created, Dj Claudio High, I think that the visual effects and the correct audience is just as important. Within our procumer team there was many different roles, the team divided into separate groups when creating the mash up. A large part of the group was focused on visuals; creating the image of the artist, creating the music video and creating the social networking sites in order to portray the image of Dj Claudio High. With out the use of the these different marketing techniques our artist wouldn’t if got as many views and likes, therefore I believe it is important to have a good image for the artist, as well as interesting music.

Advertising to a specific audience is important as it allows the audience to be directly linked to an artist they have an interest in. Although we uploaded the music video late, we found from our other sources that the audience like the visuals aspects, our Instagram images gathered more likes than the mash-up music itself. Using different social networking sites, like Instagram, is very important in order to get the music across to the procumer group that relates to the music we are putting across, with out the use of different social sites the music we created wouldn’t get across to the audience. Linking the music directly to its audience is a quick, easy and fast way in order to get the product out there, social media allowed us to do this.

Although we uploaded the music video late to YouTube we still advertised it in the same way, within a hour our music video got 20 likes and the music itself only received 10. Overall the music itself has more views as it stands however this is because we uploaded the video late, so based on a period of time the music video received the most interest from the audience. Looking into the statistics this shows that the music could be any old mash up as long as there is some visuals to go along with it, our music video is a young girl dancing around in different locations, it has the comedy factor more than anything, this proves that the audience need to be amused and entertained from something other than the music itself, within out group this brought up the argument, is the music being devalued. After spending such a long time creating the mush-up we believed it had been spoilt by the demeaning video of a young Asian girl dancing around creating her own wild dance moves.

Discuss the issues raised by Media Ownership in the production and exchange of texts.

The mash-up we have created is in no way pure; we have downloaded a variety of different songs and placed them all together in order to create something new. When creating the mash-up of old songs, we have to think about the ownership of the original songs, as we are using more than 1 song and putting them all together we need to think about the final outcome, as the songs we are using are all from different labels, the ownership of the final mash-up would need to be thought about. After posting the mash-up online we have n o yet received any issues regarding the ownership of the songs, we believe this is because it is free advertising for the original artist themselves, hearing a small section of a song may get them to want to hear the rest and this may encourage them to buy, download or just simple follow the artist. Mash-ups have created a problem in the past, EMI didn’t want any of there songs to be used in a mash-up they requested to be paid for the use of any of their music, this resulted in them going under and they have now been brought by Universal for 1.2 billion! Mash-ups are now being created by many different procumers, the mash-up we created and placed online is still there and receiving likes, views and most importantly helping old, unheard and in some cases unknown music become popular and listed to.

Presentation

Exam Case study

Task 2 

Question 2:

Research One Direction & their releases: Have they used any songs on Sony's back catalogue to re-image/brand and release (look at their weekly releases over the show on iTunes - who owns the rights to this song, are they subsidiaries of Sony Records?)

One direction have writers that write their songs for them, although the boy band sing the songs they do not legally own them. The boys have done a cover of teenage kicks, this was for charity and this song was not owned by the boys or sony records. 

Question 3:
How are One Direction is promoted & distributed (after and including Xfactor), how successful they are (sales, downloads, news articles, online games, advertising, Brit awards). How can do they create relationship with their audience?

X-factor was a massive part of One Directions courier; to start with One Direction never entered The X Factor! The five members of the band actually entered the competition as solo artists. However, the Simon Cowell, who created the show, put the guys together into a group. All of this happened in 2010 when Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson appeared on the seventh season of x-factor. One direction became very famous during the duration of the show. During the x-factor they built a good fan base, throughout the show they appeared in many different magazines and newspapers, the band also appeared on you tube with some of their live performances. Although they did well throughout the competition, the boys did not win the show, finishing third to winner Matt Cardle and runner-up Rebecca Ferguson. Although they      boy band came third, for some reason the boys are doing better than Rebecca and matt.

After the x-factor the boy band was signed to Syco Records, which is Simon Cowell’s label in the UK and Columbia Records in the US. After this the boy band grew as a group and slowly become more and more popular. The show also helped them progress as a group as they appeared again the next year as guest performers, the show also allowed them to gain more fans at the x-factor UK tour.

Once signed to the record label the boy band promoted themselves in many different ways, they have grown and developed and now have a twitter page with 11,179,160 follows and a Facebook page with 14,627,859 likes. One direction also have many videos on you tube with an average of 78,497,941 views per video! The boy band also use other social networking sites such as pintrest, tumblr, sound cloud and Get Glue. One direction also have a official website that allows you to see all of their new music and videos. Their website allows you to navigate to many different pages including, news, music, events, photos, videos and many more! The website also has links to other pages that the boy band have created, such as their Facebook page.

As well as creating their own web pages and posting their own videos, one direction’s fans do a lot of promoting and distributing. Many fans create Facebook pages and websites around the band themselves, this allows one direction’s music to be seen and heard without the band actually doing anything. Fans of one direction also distribute the bands music world wide without even knowing it, when fans that post music videos or songs that they like on you tube it allows a world wide audience to view the music, this promotes One Direction globally.

The bands loyal fan base kept the boys profile high, however their record company made it all possible with the release of their first single "What Makes You Beautiful’’. The band released their first album, ‘’up all night’’ in November of 2011. The album was the fastest selling debut album of 2011 in the UK and hit number 2 in the UK charts.

The boys won a Brit Award in Feb 2012 for "What Makes You Beautiful" this promoted them even more and helped them along their way. After they had won the award they went to the US to begin a new relationship with the fans out there. The album One Direction's "Up All Night" made history by becoming the first UK group to have a debut album enter the US Billboard chart at Number One.

The band announced a tour date at New York's famous Madison Square Garden, it sold out in 30 seconds. The boy band added more dates and was playing venues all over the world including the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe. This helped promote the music even more as a worldwide audience was hearing the music. One direction have now begun work on their second album, the band have more tour dates planned through 2012 and 2013. As of August 2012 the boys had sold 12 million records worldwide. To add to the promotion of the boy band Syco Film are planning a movie featuring the band, with a planned release date of October 2013.

The band has won many different awards through out their time in the business, looking into I found over 20 different awards! I have emended a picture of all the awards they have gained! The band are very successful now after appearing on the scene in August  2012. Since this time the band have had 3 albums. "Up All Night" and "Take Me Home" are two albums that sold over 1 million copies. Both albums reached the top of the best selling albums of 2012, "Up all Night" making it to number 3 and "Take Me Home" Reaching number 8. "Live While Your Young" wasn't as successful as the first two albums but still reached the charts. The Boys released four singles, with "what makes you beautiful" being the first one to be released and this one went straight to number 1 in the charts.

Through all of their success, One direction still create a relationship with their audience. After looking through many different social networking sites i can see that the majority of their fans are females between the age of 10 and 15. 

Using social media allows the band to build a relationship with their fans, many young girls on twitter tweet members of the band in hope of a reply, in order to build a relationship the band to tweet certain fans back. On a regular basis the band tweet about their music, the band also post on Facebook and you tube.

The band also puts on many tours and go to different music festivals in order to connect with their fans.

Question 4:

 How does X-Factor Produce, Market, Distribute & Exchange music and & how does this relate to Sony's back catalogue? 

X-factor is a very popular program that many people watch on the television every year. What people don’t realize is that the program is producing, marketing, distributing and exchanging music all the time it is on the tele. Simon Cowell, the A&R for Sony Entertainment, has the rights to x-factor.

 The show auditions millions of new artists who want to make it as a singer, as Simon owns his own label he is constantly looking for a new artist that he thinks he will be able to sign. Through out the production process they eliminate the terrible singers and the artists who are not going to make it in the industry. The show also turns the hopefuls into the stars the show expects them to be, costume designers, make up artists and mentors turn the artist into a new person who they believe will be more successful in the industry.

Through out the series of x-factor the new artist are getting promoted and marketed, as the x-factor is such a popular show the new artist are getting watched on the tele every Saturday night, they are also getting noticed by the press and getting put into magazines and newspapers. The contestants on the show also get marketed through different radio stations, the show also gets shown using You Tube, and this means the contestant already has a worldwide audience. As the show is so popular due to its own marketing the contestants is most likely defiantly going to be noticed. The show has its own sponsors (coke and talk talk), the show also has its own website, it is also shown on the tele, through magazine and newspapers and social networking.

The winner of x-factor then has a single distributed through out the country; the single is put on iTunes, sold in stores such as HMV and placed on social networking sites. The new single is also played on a variety of different radio stations; this helps the winner become even better known.

X-factor is linked to Sony’s back catalogue as Simon is free to use these songs, the artists that wins the show can produce a copy of an old song in order to promote themselves. For example, James Arthur released the song impossible, which was originally sung by Shontelle.