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.
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