Article analysis 4

History of Popular Music from 1950
"This history of pop music is tied up in the history of technology that delivers it"

Rhythn & Blues, Rock'n'Roll:
Rock'n'Roll began modern music in early 1950s, this style of music introduced an element sexual innuendo, those dancing to the songs got very dirty, it was mainly enjoyed by the black population of a still segregated America, and was frowned on by the white society.
Until Elvis Presely. One day Elvis dropped in to a local radio station to record a song for his mother's birthday, costing him $4. Sam Philips was recording the track and liked what he heard, 8 months later he asked Elvis to record a song at the studio and they soon developed a song called "That's All Right, Mama" and this became his first single. People liked Elvis because he was 'a white singer who sounded black'. In Elvis, Sam created an 'irresistible pop culture combination' and Elvis became a regional star going to make Hollywood deals.

Pop Music & Television:
TV was the next big technical innovation that impacted the way people consume music. TV made the world of music more action-packed. Elvis aged 21 revealed the 'full, scandalous, sexy possibilities' of himself and music on the Ed Sullivan show in 1955.
This performance took the world by shock giving Elvis international attention as he provided a flashpoint for fears about juvenile delinquency and moral decay in society. Critics slammed him saying he had 'no discernible singing ability'.
Here is the performance that started all the buzz:


Parents, Teenage Girls and Cops:
The main reason people criticised Elvis was because they were scared of integration, and Elvis supported and encouraged the idea of integration. Music, like all other areas in society, had segregation  with different ''race-records", the thought of whites and blacks enjoying the same music made most members of society furious. But Rock'n'Roll was an out and proud integrated type of music playing mostly to mixed crowds and slowly encouraging the idea of integration amongst society.

What I would consider when producing my own project is the idea of politics. Music is not political, but Elvis made is so with his success in encouraging integration, this is what made him so famous, he played a huge part in making a massive change in society. So I would consider the idea of making my artist represent more then just music, and touch on other serious elements in society which people want changed.

Article anaylsis 3

A background to the Music Industry and some basic theory

Pop Music Genre - Genre is the classification of a text according to its style and context. Some example of genres are pop, rap, jazz and there are many more. Each genre includes a variety of sub-genres which make an artist unique within there genre.

Genre and Artist Image:
For an artist to fall into a specific genre they must represent that genre physically and mentally -

 For an example, Adele represents the genres of Soul and R&B, she physically represents this in what she wears, and she is often photographed in classic, retro clothing that associates her with her role models Aretha Franklin or Dusty Springfield. She mentally represents her genre with her laid back attitude and her non-fame-seeking behaviour. In contrary, Lady Sovereign represents a punk, rap genre by wearing casual clothes and unusual things like wacky glasses, she mentally represents punk, rap by her aggressive and restless behaviour.

Genre and Sales:
Customers often restrict themselves to a specific genre that they listen to and will very rarely purchase music from artists who represent areas out of this genre. Music streaming services such as Pandora or Spotify use past genre choices to try and encourage you to buy new music.

When producing my own product I will try to make my artist touch on many different genres in order to reach to a wider audience and increasing revenue.

Article analysis 2

A biog of Jamal Edwards from The Guardian
By Jamal Edwards

Edwards is the founder of the online music channel SBTV who does most of his filming 'guerrilla' style, filming anywhere, without permission. Edwards, age 16 launched an Internet music channel broadcasting 'grime music', this consisted of London rappers free styling on the street, backstage at gigs or in the back seats of cars, the footage would then be posted online within a few days with no editing so it was 'raw and often thrilling'.


Edwards' now films people like Nicki Minaji and Bruno Mars and has over 50,000 subscribers with over 39 million views. He has signed a deal with Sony RCA and is now called a 'media mogul'. He emphasises the need to 'chase your dreams, not the competition, because looking at the competition will cloud your vision'.

In this Self Belief series, Edwards talks about the secret of his success. He discusses key moments in his life and the importance of self belief, acquiring new skills, building confidence and skills: 

Edwards has taught me to use a guerrilla style of filming in order to create a raw project and develop a more realistic project. Making use of free viral marketing allows more budget to be spent on the production of the music and the development on the artist.

Article analysis 1

Why Piracy is Perpetuating Plastic Pop
By Helienne Lindvall

Lindvall discusses her negative views on piracy and how unwilling people are to pay for music. Artists don't feel confident to fight against piracy due to previous failed attempts including Lars Ulrich getting a massive public backlash for suing Napster. Lily Allen also declared her view on piracy and how the revolution of it deprives most younger artists the chance to make a living out of it, but again there was a huge public backlash, including death threats aimed at her.
A point made by Noel Gallagher explains that the music industry is a business, so for it to be successful it has to be earning money by selling products created by artists. But the revolution of illegal downloading and piracy is causing profits to be minimised. This is coming to be a huge problem for the music industry and causing artist to seek other methods of revenue, such as extending the length of their tours.
Billy Corgan suggested that now people have the option to not pay for music, this has 'turned music culture into a service culture' and people are becoming to picky about the actual artist desiring a manufactured artist who is perfect in every aspect, when in reality all of the artist have flaws and the public cannot expect a 'conveyer belt of cookie-cutter pop stars'.
In terms of producing my own product, I don't not see a way of avoiding the problem of piracy, so I would focus on working around it in order to not let it damage income too drastically. I would have to manufacture the artist in order to create buzz and interest from the public so there are more encouraged to download the product legally. I would also focus on areas of being an artist which you cannot illegally download, such as touring and privet concerts in order to maximise revenue.

Goats

Lillian and I worked together to make humorous mash ups of well known music videos and clips of goats shrieking like people. Like other youtube users have done with various music videos such as Taylor Swifts 'I knew you were trouble':

We used windows movie maker to make the mash up. This was a pretty simple program where we had to initially upload our chosen video, which we decided would be Britney Spears' 'If you seek Amy'. We then chose places were a goat screaming would be funny and unexpected. We cut out the section where the goat should go, then replaced it with the goat.


We used a range of social networking sites to achieve maximum youtube hits. We posted a link to the video on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace in the hope that our friends/followers would watch the clip.
Unfortunately, when people tried to watch our video, they were shown this page:

So the video was taken down due to a breach of copy rights and we are not authorised to use Britney's video to create our own material. Although some of our classmates videos were not taken down, this is because different music companies have different policies and some companies see videos like this as beneficial to the song as people watch it, video it amusing and then are more likely to download the song. This is otherwise known as grassroots activity.
I really enjoyed this task and look forward to having another attempt at making a video like this and I hope it will not be banned as due to the copyright issue I did not get to see how successful our marketing plans worked.

Album cover analysis