Record Label Companies Research

I looked at similiar artists to ours and researched the record labels they were signed to, to see if there were any which were the same and research any independent record labels.
Myspace Bands: itunes, small record labels, friends and reccomendations, other local bands and other myspace users. 
Vertical Intergration: When the record label owns all areas of management, production and distribution for producing a signed bands album. The four main record label companies are, Sony Music, Universal, Warner and EMI.
 I have reasearched artists similar to ours to see what record labels they are signed to and if any of them are the same:
John Mayer
Signed to Aware, Columbia. In 1998 Aware entered into agreement with Columbia Records providing acess to national marketing and distribution.
Oasis
Signed to Creation, Epic, Columbia, Sony Music, Big Brother, Reprise U.S
Columbia- Unit of EMI but owned by Sony Music
Jack Johnson
Signed by Everloving, Brushfire, Universal
Everloving- debut  record label- Film such as Donnie Darko with music from Mad World (Has sub record labels)
Bushfire- Record Label owned by Jack Johnson originally for woodshed films, a surfing movie production owned by Jack Johnson, Emmett Malloy and Chris Malloy for "thicker than water"

Theories And Conventions Of Music Videos

We looked at Goodwin's three strand theory of visuals, music and lyrics and decided we want to illustrate our music video by filming at a local train station as our song is called 'Take me on a train'. In order to do this we need to contact a station manager and ask permission to do this. 


A good place to film would be Audley End station and here are pictures of the location:

We used google to get the address of National Rail and we will be contacting them to find out if we can film in these locations, if not we will have to decide on another location.

Ideal Audience Profile

• Artist: Jason Mraz

• Ideal Audience Member: Tracy, American, 27 years old

• She bought her first album when she was 19 (in 2002) 'Waiting for my rocket to come' to play in her green beetle car. 

• She got an art degree at university.

• Her fiance bought her the latest album in 2009 'Beautiful mess' which is of a rock genre.

• She also likes John Mayer and Jack Johnson. 

• Her and her fiance came to England in 2009 to live on the outskirts of london. 

• When in London she saw John Mayer perform at the 02 in London as a birthday present and has now bought his album. She put it on her ipod but still uses the CD in the car.

• When she feels homesick from her hometown in California she puts on Jason Mraz which reminds her of her American lifestyle. 

Music Video Reveiws

Music reviews

To gain information on what the audience really thought about the artist’s song I researched reviews and whether they were positive or negative feedback.

I used a variety of sites to gain this information.

www.music-reviewer.com

www.nme.com/reviews

www.reviewcentre.com

The following reviews are from the public from www.reviewcentre.com

James Morrison (You give me something)

“Someone told me that this song reminded them of me so I had to have a listen. I was pleased as I like the lyrics, song and James Morrison sang it beautifully. It is a really nice song, easy listening to chill and relax to”

James Blunt- (You’re Beautiful)

“I like this song as soon as I heard it. It is very emotional and everyone seems to like it as well”

The Kooks- (Naive)

“The Kooks, Naive has totally captivated me, although not in the conventional way. The song is very tuneful and the song lyrics are slightly above average and I think as a new band on the 'Indie' scene they will do well, particularly on the festival circuit.
However the song is sung in such a way that the singer actual sounds as he has tourettes his voice is so erratic. This has lead to a seriously compelling listen and not for the song but just to hear the singer’s voice.”

Songs Like Ours

Now we have decided on our song that we are going to use for our final piece. We have now decided to research songs like Oasis "Little By Little" At the beginning of this song there is a slight echo and then resumes after each chorus. 

The video starts on the image of people walking around a dark street on a rainy day, holding umbrellas. The mise-en-scene is particularly noticeable in this part of the video as the video is edited so that the shot is in black and white apart from the umbrellas. It is a band performance as we can see the artists performing and playing the instruments rather than a dance routine or   strong narrative. The genre of this video is alternative rock and common conventions of this genre within videos are the use of dark colours and simple settings.

This is shown within this video as the main location of the video is set on a street which is seemed to be shot in minimal light. Other common conventions are that there is a lot of emotion shown through facial expression particularly through close ups to express this emotion fully to audience. This puts John Stewart’s theory into practice as he explored the use of lighting and close ups to focus on the star’s face. We can also comment on Andrew Goodwin’s theory of close ups as this can help when relating and communicating with the audience. The lyrics of the song suggest the idea of taking things for granted and not appreciating them, this can reflect the choice of black and white throughout the video with the odd tint of colour.  To attract the audience particular shots are used to help the audience communicate or relate to the artist. Also sightline helps the audience to communicate to the artist as they feel they are personally singing to them. The costumes in which are worn throughout the video relate to the audience as it can be seen to be what the audience wears or “the guy of the street” look. The Mise-en-scene of the piece includes the props of the guitars. This demonstrates the idea of the talent aspect whereas the image they are going for is perhaps more musicians rather than stars.  When looking at the mise-en-scene of the piece we can comment on the atmospheric dark location in which the video is set. This links back to common generic conventions of rock videos as they are usually seen to be shot in dark or use minimal light exposure to give the sense of emotion.

When looking at camera angles and editing we can pick out particular shots which emphasize the artist’s image or communication with the audience. Synchronized editing is demonstrated throughout the video and this is shown at 0.40 seconds. The affect of doing this is that the audience thinks that the artist is performing specifically for them especially with direct sightline which makes the video artist seem personal to each member to the audience. Towards the beginning of the video editing techniques are used to make one of the artists look considerably small to the other characters walking in the street. The connotations of this are that it could be portraying the idea from the song title “little by little” and putting this into the video. To capture the main artists a variation of shots are used but mostly the use of close ups and mid shots are used. Editing techniques such as panning and tilt are also illustrated throughout the video to create this variety when shooting the artists.

Throughout the video we can look at various representations. The most noticeable one would be how the artist on the street is represented when he seems to reduce in size. This is done by using a low angle shot. The affect of using this is that it makes the audience feel sympathetic and curious about his height. The sound of the song doesn’t appear to change throughout the video. Although in some video’s added sounds are included for the video that is not in the airplay version because the video can be made after the single is released and if extra sounds are included, this could attract the audience as they havn’t heard this version of the song with small added extras.  

Audience Research For Existing Bands/Artists

To research the audience profiles for existing bands and artists I was able to use this website http://whois.domaintools.com/ It was able to give an average figure to how many visits a particular website got a month. I typed in the web address and it gave me a monthly average to how many times that website had been visited. I was only able to find the age profiles for James blunt but went into further research into other artists.

US Demographics: Jamesblunt.com

Official Sites monthly visits: 2,811

Male 33%

Female 67%

3-12 (5%)

13-17 (18%)

18-34 (32%)

35-49 (23%)

50+ (23%)

James Morrison official site monthly visits: 2,017

Kate Nash official site monthly visits: 4,202

I also researched the audience for particular audiences by looking at popular music videos on youtube and then looked at the ages of the people who commented on it.

The Kooks (Naive)

21, 15, 13, 13,

32, 21, 16, 26,

19, 30, 16, 17,

21, 26, 20, 25

John Mayer (Half Of My Heart)

30, 14, 37, 28,

31, 20, 19, 30,

22, 22, 30, 21,

24, 21, 24, 21,

30, 19, 19

Scouting For Girls (Heartbeat)
18, 24, 25, 39,
17, 21, 17, 16,
34, 17, 15, 30,
18,23, 19, 19

By carrying out this research it gives us a good idea on how we can produce an audience profile for our song and who our target audience should be.

James Blunt Analysis and Review

In this music video it shows the artist in a wood or forest at night time. I think it attracts the ausience and particulary his fans because he is the only person to be shot in the whole video which makes the audience feel connected to him as if he was communicating to them. Although the genre is pop, there are features of indie pop featured in the music such as the traditional acoustic guitar and bass playing. The video itself is seen to be quite fierce and aggressive by the use of the fire surrounding him. The song lyrics suggest that there are 3 men who are seen to be faultless (hence the name, wisemen) then something happens which turns their life upside down and changes it drastically. This is reflected in the video by the calm atmosphere at the beginning and then when the artist shows himself setting fire to a passport the mood and atmosphere changes, showing shots of fire which gradually become more frequent as the video progresses. Synchronised editing is used throughout the video as the artist lip syncs the lyrics while his sightline is directed at the camera. This is shown at 1.19 until 1.22 in the video. The affect of using this is that it draws the audience in makes them feel as if the artist is communicating to the individual person watching the video. The video starts peacefully by the artist driving a car in daylight which reflects the calm music which starts the song. Camera movement techniques such as panning and tilts are used to shoot the artist. Techniques like these are used to vary the shots of the artist as there is only 1 person in the video. Tracking is also used to capture the artist as he is walking forward. The most frequent angle to shoot the artist is mid close ups and close ups. This is done to capture the artists face expression and put empahasis on the lip synching. Also theses shots might have been used because there are not any other band members performing so there wouldn't be a lot of need to use extreame long shots other tahn to establish the setting and location. The artist is represented as a young man who is perhaps showing negative representations by his actions of setting the passport on fire. This is generally seen as irresponsible and an act of agression whereas his expression and body language does not connect with this action. I think it has a possitive effect on young people as the lyrics tell the story of 3 men and how their actions drastically changed them. This could be a moral for young people and how their actions could affect them.

Indie-Pop

http://prezi.com/8cptm5ltantc/jason-mraz-ideal-audience-profile/

Indie pop is a type of sub genre from the main genre of indie. It orginated in the UK in the mid 1980's. It is a genre of alternative pop. "The term "indie" refers to Independent record Label and the labels themselves." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_pop) The key features of indie music is generally the instruments particularly the use of acoustic instruments such as guitar, bass and drums. Indie prides itself on individuality, local gigs and playing acoustic instruments.

Audience Expectations

• Video will reflect their style choices
• That the video will be appropriate to the song.
• The style will be expected and recognized.

Indie-pop artists:

• John Mayer
• Jason Mraz
• Kate Nash
• Kings of Leon
• Ellie Goulding
• Florence and the Machine
• The Kooks
• The Killers
• Pigeon Detectives
• Scouting for girls

Research For Audience

http://whois.domaintools.com/

To find out about artist's official websites we used a website which recorded every month how many people visited that site.

Monthly:
Jason Mraz: 32,317
Katy Perry:151,534
Lily Allen: 4,567
Paolo Nutini: 1,244

The reason why Jason Mraz and Katy Perry have so many more hits is because they are newer established artists than Lily Allen and Paolo Nutini and when they were first found and established they probably had many more hits than they do now, purley because there are many more artists around now,

Researching For Audience

Radio Research:

 HEART RADIO

Core Audience: 25-44

Plays songs from 70's-00's- best current songs

London- 816,000 listeners every morning.

KISS RADIO

2 million listeners weekly.

Kiss TV currently reaches 950,000 adults (15+ adults)

Total Kiss network across uk including fm, digital and digital tv reaches 3.3 million a week.

SMOOT RADIO

40-59's (40+)

Music form the last 5 decades

MAGIC RADIO

35-44 Soft Contemporary classics.

July Assignment- Technical Processes

We started by being given a specific genre of music in order to produce a music album cover for this genre. We were given Country Western so our group decided we needed to do some research in order for us to produce a successful CD cover.  We began this research by looking up on the internet famous western singers such as Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. We looked at music stores online to see other recommendations of which the audience also like who purchased this product. We looked at album covers of these artists and looked at generic conventions which were main features.  We noticed that costume was a large part of the Mise-en-scene and decided to put these ideas into a brainstorm.

After we had researched current Western stars, we started brainstorming ideas on what we had found and what we had noticed as a common convention. We then decided to produce a separate brainstorm as to what we wanted to include in our CD cover. We used ideas that we had found particularly the style and costume of existing artists. This included features such as mise-en-scene and the costume selection as this is a key feature of the cover which shows that it is a country western album. On the Dolly Parton album cover we can see that the male artist is wearing a cowboy hat so we decided to use this idea when considering props and costumes. We also noticed that most of the shots were taken outside to represent the “country” music.

Once we had a plan of what we basically wanted we then produced a props and costume list ready for when we took the photos.  We arranged to shoot the photos at Hannah’s house as she has horses and we thought this would be good to show on our album cover. We arranged a time with the rest of our group members and took as many photos as we could so we had a lot to choose from when it came to editing. We didn’t arrange any specific shots before hand as we were not quite sure what would work and what wouldn’t so we took as many different ones as we could so that we had a variety. We also had to take into account that if it was going to be a sunny day, we would have to change the opacity of the image when it came to editing the photo.

Once we had done this we uploaded them onto the computer and chose the most appropriate ones for the front and the back cover. We chose similar ones to show the beginning and end of the album. Once we had uploaded them we then had to start editing them to make them look professional and add generic conventions to it such as commercial information and song titles.

We firstly decided on how to present the front and back cover by editing the actual picture. We changed the contrast to make it look slightly darker and added the blur tool to edit the main feature of the girl and horse, which is opposite to the front cover.  We then added song titles and commercial information by using the text tool and placed it in a place that was recognized to be a CD cover.  We used the same font for the song titles and commercial/ legal information to keep the same professional style throughout the album. We used record label logos which we had created as we noticed this was a common generic convention of the back of a CD cover.