Sunday, 27 February 2011
Alicia Keys - Like You'll Never See Me Again
I decided to look at some videos by other Neo-Soul artists and gain inspiration from their videos, to help me when I shoot my video with AbbieSinger. This video is not the official video by Alicia Keys as the official video's embedding code was removed upon request.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Planning of chosen unsigned artist
My unsigned artist is Abbie Hameed, known as "AbbieSinger" who has a keen interest in making music about her life, past events and things that are important to her. She considers herself to go under the musical genre of 'Neo-Soul'. Abbie attends the same 6th Form as me and has always taken part in talent shows by performing. Her music is widely appreciated by people in my sixth form and around Newham and Redbridge. Abbie chooses to make music as a hobbie and something she wants to further pursue later in life as a career. I chose to market Abbie because she is a very versatile and co-operative artist and is easy to work with as i see her often. Another unsigned artist that my group mentioned was a male Grime artist. I thought it would be interesting to market him because he does a lot of free-styling which is quite relative to real life. However his pre-set attitude and style was typical of a mainstream Grime artist and it may have been hard to market him differently to everyone else, as he has similar values to existing Grime artists already. Taking all of this into account, our group decided to market AbbieSinger because she was easier to access and work with, and had more of an idea of where she wants to be which is important when working with unsigned artists.
Follow this link for more information on Getting started in the music industry:
http://zaramedia11.blogspot.com/2011/01/getting-started-in-music-industry-and.html
Roles in the Music industry
There are many roles within the music industry who are all involved with marketing the artist.
- Manager – Responsible for planning tours, leasing with record company, promotional activities, photo sessions. Confidence is needed and important to think about the bigger picture and think creative. Everything you think of has to be relevant in the future, not something that will only last a year or 2.
- A&R (Artists and Repertoire) - Finding bands and seeing a lot of gigs. Pair them with producers to make big records and singles and campaigns. Ideas about videos and how the artist wants to be perceived is important
- Producer – Works with an act to get their songs onto record. They will help an act choose the right tracks and capture the right sounds for a record.
- Engineer – Sound engineer – Helps build sound picture, make your ideas come to reality. Often have a good idea of how to get the best sound for you but if an artist knows what sound they want to produce they need to describe it very carefully so the engineer can produce that for them properly.
- Promoter – Pays for everything – venue, security, band, catering, posters, leaflets. Projecting/advertising the event, pays for venue, security, advertising, paying bands, catering, researching new artists. Marketing team who market everything that happens and deliver shows.
- Booking Agent - Finds, sources and books shows. Looks after and progresses with an artist, negotiates deals with acts and venues. UK artists should start in the UK, but it is important to try working yourself up into different countries to gain more publicity. Booking agents deal with the length of shows, positioning, when to perform, issue contracts, work permits are sorted for over-seas artists who want to start making music in another country e.g: UK to Japan
- Tour Manager - Makes sure the artist gets to the right venue at the right time to perform a gig, a tour manager will handle all the personnel issues during a tour. These can include everything from handling the press during the tour, checking if they band are healthy enough to perform and making sure budgets are in check.
- Plugger – Increases your chances of getting played, the producers and DJs personally know these people and take their opinions on. Keeps producers and DJ’s in the know of the plot for what a bands activities are outside the record. – what they’re touring, capabilities they have, festivals, what press they may have in order to create a buzz on an act.
- Publisher – Allows work to be created, selected and delivered at high quality for the public. -
Creatives: find talent and exploit that talent, work with other artists to pitch songs. ALSO:
Sync team: pitch to tv, media and try to get music placed there.
Administration – protects artists rights and that they get paid for performances, record sales, synchronizations. Very important inter-related functions of a publisher
- Agent – Everything is sorted for the artist - Fee, travel, and hotel. Gigs are very time consuming so you need an agent to be sorting out everything for you when you get onto a certain level. If you get an agent too early, you can risk scaring promoters off because they feel like the artist has someone there to help them already. You need people to be talking about you already and building up word of mouth in order to be successful in finding an agent. Sending out MySpace link and being pro-active and being enthusiastic will encourage an agent to want to work with you.
Looking at all these roles has helped to realise how much work is put into marketing an artist and making sure they are successful. The only way an artist to be successful and make it far is by having all these people playing these roles and on-hand for you to make you the most appealing artist to the audience as you can be.
- Manager – Responsible for planning tours, leasing with record company, promotional activities, photo sessions. Confidence is needed and important to think about the bigger picture and think creative. Everything you think of has to be relevant in the future, not something that will only last a year or 2.
- A&R (Artists and Repertoire) - Finding bands and seeing a lot of gigs. Pair them with producers to make big records and singles and campaigns. Ideas about videos and how the artist wants to be perceived is important
- Producer – Works with an act to get their songs onto record. They will help an act choose the right tracks and capture the right sounds for a record.
- Engineer – Sound engineer – Helps build sound picture, make your ideas come to reality. Often have a good idea of how to get the best sound for you but if an artist knows what sound they want to produce they need to describe it very carefully so the engineer can produce that for them properly.
- Promoter – Pays for everything – venue, security, band, catering, posters, leaflets. Projecting/advertising the event, pays for venue, security, advertising, paying bands, catering, researching new artists. Marketing team who market everything that happens and deliver shows.
- Booking Agent - Finds, sources and books shows. Looks after and progresses with an artist, negotiates deals with acts and venues. UK artists should start in the UK, but it is important to try working yourself up into different countries to gain more publicity. Booking agents deal with the length of shows, positioning, when to perform, issue contracts, work permits are sorted for over-seas artists who want to start making music in another country e.g: UK to Japan
- Tour Manager - Makes sure the artist gets to the right venue at the right time to perform a gig, a tour manager will handle all the personnel issues during a tour. These can include everything from handling the press during the tour, checking if they band are healthy enough to perform and making sure budgets are in check.
- Plugger – Increases your chances of getting played, the producers and DJs personally know these people and take their opinions on. Keeps producers and DJ’s in the know of the plot for what a bands activities are outside the record. – what they’re touring, capabilities they have, festivals, what press they may have in order to create a buzz on an act.
- Publisher – Allows work to be created, selected and delivered at high quality for the public. -
Creatives: find talent and exploit that talent, work with other artists to pitch songs. ALSO:
Sync team: pitch to tv, media and try to get music placed there.
Administration – protects artists rights and that they get paid for performances, record sales, synchronizations. Very important inter-related functions of a publisher
- Agent – Everything is sorted for the artist - Fee, travel, and hotel. Gigs are very time consuming so you need an agent to be sorting out everything for you when you get onto a certain level. If you get an agent too early, you can risk scaring promoters off because they feel like the artist has someone there to help them already. You need people to be talking about you already and building up word of mouth in order to be successful in finding an agent. Sending out MySpace link and being pro-active and being enthusiastic will encourage an agent to want to work with you.
Looking at all these roles has helped to realise how much work is put into marketing an artist and making sure they are successful. The only way an artist to be successful and make it far is by having all these people playing these roles and on-hand for you to make you the most appealing artist to the audience as you can be.
CCCS Theories about Youth culture
CCCS - Centre for Contemporary Cultural Srudies aka The Birmingham School
This Centre focused on particular areas of research into popular cultures such as urban subcultures and ethnic and sexual identity. CCCS aimed to study cultural institutions and their interaction with society and social change. Investigation into gender roles, ethnicity, criminal and other subcultures and how they all link into society was vital.
David Reisman defined 'Mainstream' as audiences who passively accept the styles and beliefs provided by commercials. By conforming to something mainstream, you will come across similar to everyone else.
A 'Sub-Culture' is a minority group formed from a wider, more general 'parent' culture. E.G: Soul -> Neo-Soul. Subcultures upset the mainstream beacause they confront it with difference which may be an opposite set of values to the traditional ones that everyone else would follow. There are two types of going against the mainstream. Through Crime and Through Style. The difference is that people who feel alienated result to crime in order to resist against the mainsream, they think they are causing trouble and making things worse for institutions but infact, they are making more money for the people they're rebelling against. When rebelling through style, people do it by upsetting the social norm but not intend to trouble it by causing crime and destroying society. Punks for example, created their own identy in order to stay diffferent from the invading Asian race and Caribbeans.
Sub-Cultures arent that different from their 'parent' culture because most subcultures react against or continue some of the values or styles of the parent culture.
Dick Hebdige was the first to look at how subcultures are assimilated into the mainstream. He stated that subcultures only emerge because they replace a culture that has been absorbed into the mainstream already because being different from everyone else is what matters.
So subcultures exists becase it is a way for young people from a lower to middle class background, who feel they have no access to the mainstream society, to react to the mainstream in whatever way they feel necessary. The white working class youth created the subculture of 'Punks' because they felt at the time they looked similar to others of a working class community which and felt this came through the rise of the unemployment. As stated above, some reject the values of the mainstream through crime, and some audiences use dress to either reinforce their class origins or exaggerate the fact that they aren't bound by a lower class root regardless of their past. This is the rebellion of the mainstream through style. Subcultures however need the mainstream to react to in order to rebel. But Counter-Cultures aim to make a revolution by completely opposing social mainstream and not adopting any of the traditional values or beliefs, these are all rejected.
This Centre focused on particular areas of research into popular cultures such as urban subcultures and ethnic and sexual identity. CCCS aimed to study cultural institutions and their interaction with society and social change. Investigation into gender roles, ethnicity, criminal and other subcultures and how they all link into society was vital.
A 'Sub-Culture' is a minority group formed from a wider, more general 'parent' culture. E.G: Soul -> Neo-Soul. Subcultures upset the mainstream beacause they confront it with difference which may be an opposite set of values to the traditional ones that everyone else would follow. There are two types of going against the mainstream. Through Crime and Through Style. The difference is that people who feel alienated result to crime in order to resist against the mainsream, they think they are causing trouble and making things worse for institutions but infact, they are making more money for the people they're rebelling against. When rebelling through style, people do it by upsetting the social norm but not intend to trouble it by causing crime and destroying society. Punks for example, created their own identy in order to stay diffferent from the invading Asian race and Caribbeans.
Sub-Cultures arent that different from their 'parent' culture because most subcultures react against or continue some of the values or styles of the parent culture.
| The Meaning Of STYLE |
| PUNK subculture |
Chosen Unsigned Artist Preparation
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| Lyrics - AbbieSinger - Abbie Sing |
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| Video Ideas and To-Do list in regard to my unsigned artist - AbbieSinger |
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| First draft of CD COVER |
I listened to some of Abbie's tracks with my group and we decided on the song that we would make a music video for. Part of the lyrics are located on the right.
I also drafted a quick CD cover with ideas for Abbie's album. After looking into Abbie as an artist, she is based around the genre of 'Neo-Soul' which is a fusion of contemporary R&B and Soul with incorporated elements of Jazz, Funk, Pop, African music etc and came around in the late 1990's. I wanted to portray quite a relaxed and peaceful environment hence the sun, sea and sand which colours I could emphasise by making them bolder and brighter and more saturated in order to make it stand out from other album covers.
The white rectangle is where I will place an image of Abbie, my unsigned artist.
The Guitar is a main instrument Abbie uses within her music so I felt this should have significance in the cover. I chose to make it cover the sunset because not all of Abbie's songs are positive and calm, some of them are quite informative and attack people's stereotypical perceptions of a particular type of person. Rene Magritte is a surrealist artist who became well known for his witty and thought-provoking imahges. He has inspired the idea of guitar floating in the air (infront of the sun) creating quite a surreal atmosphere and still making the guitar have significant value by having the audience questioning what it must mean. The draft cover gives the audience a window into Abbie's life as this is what she enjoys singing about, and aims her music at people who enjoy and appreciate the not so obvious meaning behind her songs.
Audience Feedback
I carried out audience research on what people think of my CD cover, how it can be improved, anything they don'tunerstand about it and essentially whether or not they would buy it.
I found that audiences usually go for albums that stand out, something which isn't dull otherwise they assume that the music will be dull also. Audiences enjoy covers with bright colours that go together and seeing the artists face clearly is important and more preferred than seeing the whole body of the artist.
Some of the people who took part in my audience research said that if they genuinly listen to the music and like it, then the cover is not so important, but obviously in most cases, it is the front cover of an album which is what draws someone into buying the album itself. The audience seemed to like albums such as 'Rihanna - Loud' because of the colour scheme which is quite toned down and calm apart from the red which is loud itself and stands out. Also, the font and title of an album cover is important too and shouldnt be so small as this is one of the main features of the album.
All this feedback has been very helpful because I know specifically what the audience expect and like a CD cover to look like so that it would appeal to them and there would be a bigger likelihood of them buying the CD.
The aspects stated about the colour scheme of an album and the importance of seeing the artists face clearly has influenced me on maybe changing the colour scheme of my album cover and toning it down. Also making sure the Abbie is the main subject of the cover and she is what you look at first instead of other aspects of the album cover. The name of the album "AbbieSinger" needs to be very visual and eye catching to the audience too.
After gathering feedback from Abbie herself, she said my ideas for her album cover were very creative and she liked how everything linked into eachother somehow symbolising aspects of her life. The only improvement Abbie advised was to make the title of her album to be more obvious so that the title and the image of herself is the first thing the audience look at when they see the album cover.
Subculture Research
We all did presentations on different subcultures to gain an insight into their typical visual image and their values and beliefs. From this I could adopt particular styles and beliefs from existing subcultures and adapt them to my unsigned artist for my project depending on how the styles relate to my artist.
- Ravers
- Rudeboyz
- Bling Hip-Hoppers
- Goths
- Mods
| Bling Hip-Hoppers |
| Mods |
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