Magazine advertising

This is an example of a magazine advert for an artist's album. It shows a clear image of the artist to catch the reader's attention as they would visually recognise Ellie Golding and wonder what she is doing in this magazine. The fact that Ellie is shown on the advert shows that she needs to be visually recognised as she may not yet be recognised by just her name. This will be a good technique to use in my own magazine advert as my artitst is not too well known yet.

The connection between the album name, Lights, and the light effects in her hair is a very clever technique.
1. It catches your eye as the bright specs are very noticeable.
2. It actually makes you remember the advert, and therefore may make you go on to buy the album.

The advert doesn't contain much information at all and this is  good idea as you do not want to bore the readers with paragraphs of information. It needs to be quick and easy.

At the bottom of the advert it shows reviews and stars. The 4 stars are easy to see and therefore it reassures you that the album is good and worth buying.

CD cover design

 

Branding

Pixie Lott uses a clear repeat of font to signify her name. This works really well as it will help people to recognise her, and her products. For instance wearing the grey hoody with just her name on it publicises her greatly. The fact that the T shirts do not even have a picture of her on it shows that she is so recognisable, just by her name. As her target audience is young she has more merchandise like this than say Bob Dylan would as they younger generation tend to worship them more. She has taken part in a red nose day photo shoot - wearing a recognisable red nose top which helps to promote her more. As you can see she has used to same photograph for a poster and a gig poster. This helps for her audience to recognise her and remember her for looking like that - a pretty young women.
The middle picture of Pixie squatting is her actual album cover for a few years ago. She has used the same font as on her tops and posters, but has used a slightly different picture to keep the audience interested. It is interesting how the font she has used is pink to target the young girls that are her fans.
The top picture looks as though she has recently started going for a new look as she is using a different font for her name and her hair is a lot shorter. Going by the fact that the picture is black and white, and the font is a lot more bland it looks as though she is trying to look more mature and sophisticated and possibly trying to target a more older audience. This may be a slight risk though as people do not see her as this person and may not be able to recognise her as much.

Having a 'niche'?

Having a niche on Prezi

The online revolution

Now that artists and bands are able to use the internet to promote their music it makes it a lot easier for them to be heard. It is free for them to publish their music and very quick and easy also. This allows the public to stream their songs and/ or download them. As this is a very easy process it means that if their intention is to only download one song they might aswel download the whole album because it takes no time at all, and then is easy to delete if not liked. The internet allows you to share music with your friends too, which promotes the artist's music. Artists can use websites such as youtube and vevo to put their music videos on too. This is an easy way for the audience to listen to the track and watch the video.
Social network sites are also a good revolution for artists to promote their music as it is free. Facebook is very popular with artists as it allows them to communicate with their fans - when their tours are, where they are etc. It also allows them to show links to their music videos, or merchandise etc. You can also see which bands/artists they are into and that may make you take an interest in another artist. Even artists who are not familiar with this technique are now using social network sites, and generally the internet to promote their work.

BOB DYLAN

Most of his celebrated work was produced in 1960 therefore Bob didn't have the internet to be able to promote his music and therefore had to do it in a more traditional way. He published three books of drawings and paintings which helped to promote him as a person and also his music. His most successful way of promoting his music was by doing gigs and tours for people to be able to see him live. He appeared in news papers for his talent which promoted his greatly and also played with artists who were bigger than him at the time as he relied on this. Back then artists relied greatly on record labels as thats what made them big. They needed their money and experties to promote their music, much more so than now. So Bob Dylan was signed up to Columbia Records. His talent started spreading world wide as he featured in an English drama called The Madhouse on Castle Street on BBC television and was then able to perform one of his songs. This was a huge promotion deal as it made the English very aware of him and his talents, and therefore buy his albums. He is such an idol because he is so sure in what he is about and was the first real passionate folk singer.


ARTIC MONKEYS

Artic monkeys formed their band in 2002, and therefore were able to use the internet to promote their music, and that's exactly what they did. They actually became famous using social network sites such as myspace to upload their music and videos.' Arctic Monkeys are heralded as one of the first acts to come to the public attention via the Internet (fan-based sites rather than from the band), with commentators suggesting they represented the possibility of a change in the way in which new bands are promoted and marketed.' Unlike Bob Dylan, this band did not need a record label to make them famous as they were able to do everything that a record label could do on the internet for free. Similar to Bob they did play lots of gigs to become more heard and promote their music and using their own recording equipment and computes were able to give away free CDs to their fans. Their fan base on myspace was becoming so huge that the BBC radio and the British tabloid press were becoming very interested and started contacting the band. They then used the website itunes to sell their music which became a huge hit.
After a huge success the band decided to sign with Domino label as they were attracted to the "DIY ethic" of Domino owner Laurence Bell, who ran the label from his own flat and only signed bands that he personally liked.

Target Audience

Lester Allen

Lester 19 is a singer song writer originaly born in luton. the music written is heavily autobiographical, following his life in development of mental illness threw to mental health.

His style is folk and his target audience is young adults 17-22 who are looking for admiration.

He was involved in a show called Goldies band on bbc 2 and had the wonderful experience of playing at Buckingham Palace to the royal family and his own family and friends.

In order to promote himself he uses social network sites such as facebook to let people know where his next gigs are, or when his new song is coming out, etc.

By having a facebook page it allows his fans to click on links to see his videos, songs, pictures etc.

Mumford and sons

This band are a mainstream band and also play folk music. Although they are mainstream they still use facebook to promote their album, songs, tours etc.

They have also been on the front cover of the NME magazine, so that readers that read this can then go on to listen to their songs and hopefully buy their album.

Another technique that Mumford and sons have used is playing with Bob Dylan who is known as the 'god of folk.' By doing this it means that all the Bob Dylan's fans will then go on to like Mumford and sons which really promotes them and their songs. They also play at really big festivals such as Reading and Glastonbury which allows people that have never heard of them to be able to listen to them and go on to buy their album. I think that their target audience is aged between 16-24, although if people who are fond of Bob Dylan like them then they tend to be a lot older.

Bob Dylan

Is a very well known folk singer who is iconic to both artists above. He has written very inspiring songs for other artists to use. His target audience is very broad as the older generation like him as they grew up with his music, but the younger generation are inspired by him. He is there to be discovered by each new generation. Although he 70 years old he still uses facebook to promote his songs etc. which shows how successful a social network site is. On facebook there is a link to buying merchandise such as T shirts which if seen being worn may interest people in to listening to his music.
Back in the day Bob did lots of festivals like Mumford and sons, and Lester are doing currently.

He has been in films and published books which also promotes his music.

There are lots of fan sites in the name of Bob Dylan which allows fans to find out what he is up too and when his next album is coming out.

What is the best way to promote an album and why?

I think that the best way to promote an album in this day and age is by doing it online. This way all generations can see it as the younger generation use social network sites and youtube, and the older generation tend to use google, and familiar sites. By promoting your album online it allows you to stream it, download it or just listen to it. It also allows you to click on links of videos, images, or documentarys.

Britney Spears Music Video Evaluation

In this exercise a group of three of us were challenged to make a 10 second extract of Britney Spears' 'Baby One More Time'. We had to recreate the exact camera angles and shots as well as the costume, mise-en-scene and dance sequence in order to produce a successful video.

During this exercise we learnt simply how to use a video camera successfully, so therefore how to record, how to use the tri-pod, how to zoom in, out, focus in and out. An interesting technical issue that we had was getting the camera angles exactly right, for example the close up at 0.04 seconds. At 0.08 seconds there is a rapid zoom out which had to be done on the camera. This was really difficult in that we had to get it done at the right time to correspond with the dance move, and also had to get the speed of the zoom out right (not to slow or fast).
The editing was difficult as the shots are so rapid to keep the audience interested. We had to make sure that the shots matched the exact shots of the official video. We found the lip syncing very hard to match with the music and would be tempted to take even more shots of it next time.

I think that one of the major things that I learnt about the practicalities of this task was that you can never have enough footage. If you have enough time you need to make sure that you film as many as the same shot as possible as there could be one thing wrong about it, but the fact is you don't have a back up to replace it with which could ruin the whole video.
The extra little things such as props and costume really do make a difference as it makes the video a lot more interesting to watch, and can also sometimes distract you from the angle of the shot which may be a good thing if it didn't quite go to plan as such.
I have learnt that the best technique for the lip syncing is definitely to have the song playing in the background so that the actor can sing a long, which will make the editing a lot simpler as it means you do not need to play with the tempo.

I found this task really worthwhile as it taught me a lot in terms of what or what not to do when doing my music video. I really enjoyed the costume decisions and the mise en scene as they worked really well in this specific video. I also enjoyed getting the positions of the camera correct as the finished product did look very similar to the official video.

From my experience in completing this task I have learnt to make sure that I use a tripod throughout my day of filming unless needing a hand held effect, as the shots look a lot more proffessional when still. I have also learnt to make sure I have the song playing in the background when filming so that the lip syncing is a lot more successful. I would like to use similar techniques to this creation such as the zoom out in one shot, and the amount of shots used in this video as just in the ten seconds there were about 14 different shots.

Britney Spears Music Video