Tuesday 30 April 2013
Question 1
It is significant because as the music is accessible online via hundreds of digital media including YouTube and spotify etc. for example Beck uses song reader for his fans to create their own versions of his song and put them on YouTube and even make money off his song by putting their versions on iTunes, whereas the prosumers and the mashups use the Internet to cover a song and create their own songs by using samples of other music.
Benn- Beck v X Factor
Beck is classed as a DIY artist, this is when they go out and do everything themselves how they want when they want to please and smaller Niche audience, this would make them want to stay and follow the artist more as they don't release one album which people like then re image themselves for profits and change there style completely. The reason why Beck doesn't change is because he is a DIY artist he doesn't have a major record label behind forcing him to change his style to what everyone likes. Compared to X Factor which is made by Simon Cowell who own a company called Syco which is part of the Major Record Label Sony who constantly produce mainstream Artists who are made to change to what is popular and do what people want to see to keep a large income for the company.
Beck doesn't devalue music as he is adding something new that has not been done before, he does this by creating the music (sheet music) but all the audience and dedicate fans produce the songs and videos. As the songs have never been preformed by him it is down to them to give there own personal interpretation of the song and each person gives it something new and original. This means that the audience feel more apart of the music and will want to listen to and interact with more bands. I find that X Factor devalues music as it is just focusing on the visuals not so much the music they are not creating new stuff just re using the old to get more sales, Beck doesn't rely on Visuals at all he relays on prosumers.
As previously stated X Factor relies heavily on visuals as if they look good some people are blinded and don't care about the music itself, every year the new contestants come out all dressed up in nice clothes with there hair done all fancy giving 'sob stories' to make people feel sorry for them and vote. It makes you wonder if its just a huge 'beauty pageant' instead of a singing contest. When they preform the songs they very rarely bring anything new to the song they just 'imitate' the original, although this helps them receive a larger fan base as you have current fans and then people that where fans of the original song thinking I remember this song which makes them watch it more in case they do other old songs they like. This really isn't moving the music industry forward but instead moving backwards.
Both X Factor and Beck have strong relationships with the audience. With X Factor they do this by finding acts people find visually appealing they can then follow the progress of the band/artist and feel more apart of them, they audience also interact by voting for acts they like, this is a good indication to X Factor as they act on them by seeing what styles work with what band and what would sell. Beck forms relationships with his audience by making his stuff more focused around them and relying on his dedicated fan base and prosumers to make his music, he then got the to share them online for everyone to see and comment on.
Production, Distribution and Exchange is very different with Beck and X Factor, Beck just does part of the production (the writing of the music) it is then down to the audience to produce the song make the video, distribute it online it is then down to the community to vote on which they find the best and enjoy which is exchange. With X Factor it is all mixed together and they mainly rely on exchange to help produce the acts and distribute them to make the more popular.
Beck doesn't devalue music as he is adding something new that has not been done before, he does this by creating the music (sheet music) but all the audience and dedicate fans produce the songs and videos. As the songs have never been preformed by him it is down to them to give there own personal interpretation of the song and each person gives it something new and original. This means that the audience feel more apart of the music and will want to listen to and interact with more bands. I find that X Factor devalues music as it is just focusing on the visuals not so much the music they are not creating new stuff just re using the old to get more sales, Beck doesn't rely on Visuals at all he relays on prosumers.
As previously stated X Factor relies heavily on visuals as if they look good some people are blinded and don't care about the music itself, every year the new contestants come out all dressed up in nice clothes with there hair done all fancy giving 'sob stories' to make people feel sorry for them and vote. It makes you wonder if its just a huge 'beauty pageant' instead of a singing contest. When they preform the songs they very rarely bring anything new to the song they just 'imitate' the original, although this helps them receive a larger fan base as you have current fans and then people that where fans of the original song thinking I remember this song which makes them watch it more in case they do other old songs they like. This really isn't moving the music industry forward but instead moving backwards.
Both X Factor and Beck have strong relationships with the audience. With X Factor they do this by finding acts people find visually appealing they can then follow the progress of the band/artist and feel more apart of them, they audience also interact by voting for acts they like, this is a good indication to X Factor as they act on them by seeing what styles work with what band and what would sell. Beck forms relationships with his audience by making his stuff more focused around them and relying on his dedicated fan base and prosumers to make his music, he then got the to share them online for everyone to see and comment on.
Production, Distribution and Exchange is very different with Beck and X Factor, Beck just does part of the production (the writing of the music) it is then down to the audience to produce the song make the video, distribute it online it is then down to the community to vote on which they find the best and enjoy which is exchange. With X Factor it is all mixed together and they mainly rely on exchange to help produce the acts and distribute them to make the more popular.
Monday 29 April 2013
DANNY- Beck v Xfactor
Comparison between Beck and X-factor.
Both of these subjects can be placed into the music industry but whether both of them can be called real music is debatable. Firstly the type of audience for both categories is completely different, Beck has a small dedicated ‘niche’ of fans, they are there solely for the music, the point this makes and that I think Beck is trying to make is that he doesn’t want to reach the majority, his small niche of fans is perfect for him because they do not want nor need the visualisation that many other music productions have, the fans get the written material and they can interpret this music however they feel it should be, making his fans into Prosumers, they are the ones who are involves in the production of the music by making their own interpretations and then putting their videos online and even on iTunes so make money of Becks written work , whereas X-factor on the other hand has a TV audience that reaches the millions so as it is on TV people of all ages can view the music, the music is more mainstream and conventional and so are x-factors audience.
The relationships these create with their different audiences are again completely different, Becks fans create the actual music and then he chooses what styles he likes and puts them on his website and plays them at his concerts, this makes the fans feel closer to the musician and feel they played a part in the creation of his music, whereas x-factors audience phone in each week to keep the contestant they want to win, this is similar as they also feel they have not played a part in the creation of the music but feel involved in the creation of the musicians success, the audience vote in exchange for money this gives a level of interaction.
The real question is whether it is devaluing the music, I argue that Beck doesn’t devalue the music as it is completely original there is no-one out there who does what he does on that scale, his way of making music gets rid if the superficial-ness of the visual marketing and distributions which sometimes especially recently prioritise over the actual music production itself, X-factor on the other hand I think does devalue the music because the contestants rarely write their own material and if they do, ironically they are usually voted off the competition in the first few weeks, the music is usually recycled form Sony’s back catalogue of music, the music follows the current convention music tastes and nothing new is produced.
Visualisation plays a huge role in the music industry these days, and x-factor contributes to this massively, firstly as x-factor is first and foremost a TV programme it has to be visual to keep the millions of different viewers entertained, recently they have dropped ion ratings so the latest series they made the productions bigger and for extravagant to keep the public watching, and sometimes the bigger visuals are usually to distract from the fact the majority of the contestants have not got great music capability to say the least. This is completely different to Beck as his music is just that, music, he doesn’t create any visuals, its his fans that make the music videos to go with their interpretations of his music, he doesn’t actually do any visualisation until his concerts, which after research only seem to be the normal flashing stage lights and a screen showing some of his fans versions.
The PDE (Production, Distribution and Marketing is completely different in each case, in X-factors case, the ‘fans’ pay for the production by paying to vote for their favourite contestant to stay in the competition, the votes provide weekly audience feedback for exchange so the record companies involved can see what is popular and what’s not, giving them a great opportunity to see what is trending , the distribution on the show is marketed through scandals, adverts and news paper headlines, each week the show will put the contestants songs on iTunes for people to pay and download, giving the show more money, Beck is completely different as he skips the production stage altogether as he just writes the music and distributes the music as a book and not a CD or iTunes download, so his music is sold through Waterstone’s or Amazon, Beck exchanges the music for the different interpretations.
Both of these subjects can be placed into the music industry but whether both of them can be called real music is debatable. Firstly the type of audience for both categories is completely different, Beck has a small dedicated ‘niche’ of fans, they are there solely for the music, the point this makes and that I think Beck is trying to make is that he doesn’t want to reach the majority, his small niche of fans is perfect for him because they do not want nor need the visualisation that many other music productions have, the fans get the written material and they can interpret this music however they feel it should be, making his fans into Prosumers, they are the ones who are involves in the production of the music by making their own interpretations and then putting their videos online and even on iTunes so make money of Becks written work , whereas X-factor on the other hand has a TV audience that reaches the millions so as it is on TV people of all ages can view the music, the music is more mainstream and conventional and so are x-factors audience.
The relationships these create with their different audiences are again completely different, Becks fans create the actual music and then he chooses what styles he likes and puts them on his website and plays them at his concerts, this makes the fans feel closer to the musician and feel they played a part in the creation of his music, whereas x-factors audience phone in each week to keep the contestant they want to win, this is similar as they also feel they have not played a part in the creation of the music but feel involved in the creation of the musicians success, the audience vote in exchange for money this gives a level of interaction.
The real question is whether it is devaluing the music, I argue that Beck doesn’t devalue the music as it is completely original there is no-one out there who does what he does on that scale, his way of making music gets rid if the superficial-ness of the visual marketing and distributions which sometimes especially recently prioritise over the actual music production itself, X-factor on the other hand I think does devalue the music because the contestants rarely write their own material and if they do, ironically they are usually voted off the competition in the first few weeks, the music is usually recycled form Sony’s back catalogue of music, the music follows the current convention music tastes and nothing new is produced.
Visualisation plays a huge role in the music industry these days, and x-factor contributes to this massively, firstly as x-factor is first and foremost a TV programme it has to be visual to keep the millions of different viewers entertained, recently they have dropped ion ratings so the latest series they made the productions bigger and for extravagant to keep the public watching, and sometimes the bigger visuals are usually to distract from the fact the majority of the contestants have not got great music capability to say the least. This is completely different to Beck as his music is just that, music, he doesn’t create any visuals, its his fans that make the music videos to go with their interpretations of his music, he doesn’t actually do any visualisation until his concerts, which after research only seem to be the normal flashing stage lights and a screen showing some of his fans versions.
The PDE (Production, Distribution and Marketing is completely different in each case, in X-factors case, the ‘fans’ pay for the production by paying to vote for their favourite contestant to stay in the competition, the votes provide weekly audience feedback for exchange so the record companies involved can see what is popular and what’s not, giving them a great opportunity to see what is trending , the distribution on the show is marketed through scandals, adverts and news paper headlines, each week the show will put the contestants songs on iTunes for people to pay and download, giving the show more money, Beck is completely different as he skips the production stage altogether as he just writes the music and distributes the music as a book and not a CD or iTunes download, so his music is sold through Waterstone’s or Amazon, Beck exchanges the music for the different interpretations.
Thursday 25 April 2013
Q3- Benn
I agree with the statement as many songs that have been poor have got into the charts and top 10 on YouTube because people take the song and do their interpretations of it. For example 'Harlem Shake' by Baauer isn't particularly a good song which you would think a song writer has sat down for days creating, improving and putting real meaning into, it is just a bunch if sounds put together which people could do a funny dance to as it is irrational and spontaneous. Another example of this would be Lady Gaga who's eccentric clothing draws attention to her, because of this people remember her and look her up to see what she does. Although the music itself is poor people remember and are attracted by the visuals. Places like X Factor do not help this as they make band and promote bands they know will sell purely on visuals for example One Direction many girls fantasise over but only for there looks as they re use music they know will sell as it has a past audience, so they get money from the old audience who liked it when it was first released and the new audience who support the band, this is called a back catalogue.
Monday 22 April 2013
Q3 MUSIC INDUSTRY
It has proven itself time and time again especially and more noticeably in recent years that as long as a media product has a good music video or viral video then it doesn't really matter about the quality of the piece of music itself. Most recently proven by Psy and his song Gangnam Style, when released in 2012 it went straight to the top of the UK chart even though the song itself was in Korean and the majority of the population had no idea what the East Asian man was singing about, how did it get to the top of the charts then you may ask, well not only did the artist release this not so musically able song, he released a music video that went viral in days and reached the views of millions on YouTube in hours, the video included Psy creating his own dance move to the song, as it was in the music video the prosumers of the work took it upon themselves to recreate the dance and create their own versions of the song, this made psy's Gangnam style trend worldwide, his popularity increased with the craze and made his piece of 'music' successful, proving that the distribution and marketing is just as important if not more important than the quality of the music itself.
Tuesday 16 April 2013
Terminology
Web 2.0
Prosumers
Visualisation
Purity
Cultural Recycling
Fans
Devaluation
Music Culture
Co-option
Convergence
Musical Abundance
Levels of Production
Heirarchies/Trending
Web 2.0
-The second phase of the internet, where the focus shifts from people receiving information and services to people creating and sharing material
Prosumers
- PROducers & conSUMERS, the contemporary audience behaviour as active participantants in the process of production of media texts
Fans
- Audience who has a strong interest, belief and identifies with the band or artist
Music Culture
- Where contemporary recordings are increasingly accessible and lead to a renewed cultural valuation of past music
Musical Abundance- The process of Remix, Re-cycling, Mashup, Re-packaging, Re-imagining of existing Media (Music) to create something new out of the old
Musical Abundance
- Industry practices that are different to traditional pre Web 2.0 and respond to the blurring of boundaries between the audience, text (music) and institutions (record labels)
Devaluation
- The consequence of a culture of free music which could be said to decrease the cultural worth or 'value' of Music.
Heirarchies/Trending
- A way of charting popularity via social networking and online distribution sites
Cultural Recycling
- A concept that questions the authenticity & integrity of Music in the light of cultural recycling, over production and autotuning.
-Visualisation
the way the music is translated into a visual aspect, either it be a music video or album art or poster, a visual interpretation
Prosumers
Visualisation
Purity
Cultural Recycling
Fans
Devaluation
Music Culture
Co-option
Convergence
Musical Abundance
Levels of Production
Heirarchies/Trending
Web 2.0
-The second phase of the internet, where the focus shifts from people receiving information and services to people creating and sharing material
Prosumers
- PROducers & conSUMERS, the contemporary audience behaviour as active participantants in the process of production of media texts
Fans
- Audience who has a strong interest, belief and identifies with the band or artist
Music Culture
- Where contemporary recordings are increasingly accessible and lead to a renewed cultural valuation of past music
Musical Abundance- The process of Remix, Re-cycling, Mashup, Re-packaging, Re-imagining of existing Media (Music) to create something new out of the old
Musical Abundance
- Industry practices that are different to traditional pre Web 2.0 and respond to the blurring of boundaries between the audience, text (music) and institutions (record labels)
Devaluation
- The consequence of a culture of free music which could be said to decrease the cultural worth or 'value' of Music.
Heirarchies/Trending
- A way of charting popularity via social networking and online distribution sites
Cultural Recycling
- A concept that questions the authenticity & integrity of Music in the light of cultural recycling, over production and autotuning.
-Visualisation
the way the music is translated into a visual aspect, either it be a music video or album art or poster, a visual interpretation
Sunday 14 April 2013
Case Study-
Task 3:
Beck is an artist who has put together a project, what he has done is wrote 20 original songs so they have never been done before and put them together in form on a book which people can use to make there own interpretations of the songs. People then share the songs on the website or online for people to watch and at the end of 2012 to be all put in one place so it is like an album. Beck started making music in the 90's, he first recorded a cassette and it was called 'Banjo Story'.
Beck heavily relied on Prosumers for this project as he gave them the materials they just had to put it together and make it there own.
As he has been around for a while he has many fans who know the styles he plays and now he has given them the chance to show him how they would do his songs which I think people, sometimes when you listen to songs from good bands you think thats a good song but theres something missing and this gives them the chance to show him what they think is missing.
He has wrote the music and given them a place to distribute what they have done it is now down to them to make the song there own and make a music video if they want and then share it to his website for all to see.
Some Examples of 'Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard':
(YouTube)
There are many different versions of this song, I have selected a mix of them. For example we have a solo female artist, acoustic, rock and pop approaches to it.
There have been a lot of positive reviews from independent people online many of them comment on articles that papers have put online putting there praise to what he has done.
Through looking at some social media sites I found that the majority of people that talk about the Song Reader project are musicians themselves, mainly all independent musicians with bands and solo artist. They seem to be aged 25+ which means that they are completely out of education and can focus on the project.
When the audience does stuff like this is makes the music more personalised and special and people can would enjoy it more as they've had there input in it and know that in some way they have affected it, I think that this adds a lot more value to music, I think that more bands should do this it would get the audience engaged agin and its something hardly anyone does and it could reboot the industry completely.
Task 2:
X Factor is focusing more on visualising the music more that it is looking for talent, as long as they look appealing they can work around them and make them sellable, as it has connections with sony it can just take tracks that already have a pre sold audience and re package the song with the new artist or just give them songs which they can easily do with minimal talent and make them look good.
Syco is a business created between Simon Cowell and Sony, there are many offices all around the world where they control many major television programmes and music brands. They mainly make talent programmes which gives them a source to get new artists from. Syco Film is something new which the company is going to try.
Ways X Factor was promoted:
Beck is an artist who has put together a project, what he has done is wrote 20 original songs so they have never been done before and put them together in form on a book which people can use to make there own interpretations of the songs. People then share the songs on the website or online for people to watch and at the end of 2012 to be all put in one place so it is like an album. Beck started making music in the 90's, he first recorded a cassette and it was called 'Banjo Story'.
Beck heavily relied on Prosumers for this project as he gave them the materials they just had to put it together and make it there own.
As he has been around for a while he has many fans who know the styles he plays and now he has given them the chance to show him how they would do his songs which I think people, sometimes when you listen to songs from good bands you think thats a good song but theres something missing and this gives them the chance to show him what they think is missing.
He has wrote the music and given them a place to distribute what they have done it is now down to them to make the song there own and make a music video if they want and then share it to his website for all to see.
Some Examples of 'Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard':
(YouTube)
There are many different versions of this song, I have selected a mix of them. For example we have a solo female artist, acoustic, rock and pop approaches to it.
There have been a lot of positive reviews from independent people online many of them comment on articles that papers have put online putting there praise to what he has done.
Through looking at some social media sites I found that the majority of people that talk about the Song Reader project are musicians themselves, mainly all independent musicians with bands and solo artist. They seem to be aged 25+ which means that they are completely out of education and can focus on the project.
When the audience does stuff like this is makes the music more personalised and special and people can would enjoy it more as they've had there input in it and know that in some way they have affected it, I think that this adds a lot more value to music, I think that more bands should do this it would get the audience engaged agin and its something hardly anyone does and it could reboot the industry completely.
Task 2:
X Factor is focusing more on visualising the music more that it is looking for talent, as long as they look appealing they can work around them and make them sellable, as it has connections with sony it can just take tracks that already have a pre sold audience and re package the song with the new artist or just give them songs which they can easily do with minimal talent and make them look good.
Syco is a business created between Simon Cowell and Sony, there are many offices all around the world where they control many major television programmes and music brands. They mainly make talent programmes which gives them a source to get new artists from. Syco Film is something new which the company is going to try.
Ways X Factor was promoted:
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