Thursday, 23 September 2010

Target Audience of Band

In this section of the blog I am going to discuss and establish the target audience of the streets in terms of their psychographics, demographics and the socio economic classification of the bands fans. Psychographic variables are any attributes of a consumers personality relating to their personality, values, attitudes, interests or their lifestyle. These can be contrasted with demographic variables such as the consumers age and gender which can be classified as in-nate personality variables. A socio-economic group, or a social grade, are based around the occupation, job and income of the household and how that income might be spent.
To first try and establish the type of consumer associated with the band, I investigated the bands facebook fan page,http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/TheStreets?ref=tss, to have a look at the sort of people joining the group and posting comments on the page to the band. I looked through a lot of the comments and noticed at least 90% of comments where from middle-aged males asking when the bands next album was to be released. In terms of their psychographics, they seemed to be of a large build with a shaven head, the sort of style usually associated with the British football hooligan. This did not come of a surprise, as the streets lyrics are very harsh to reality and often contain profanity, which is why the words of the lead singer "Mike Skinner" have attracted this sort of range. Demographics suggest that the consumer is usually in their middle ages, late 30's/early 40's and male, very little women made comments or join on the bands page. In terms of ethnicity, they are all of a white/British ethnicity and appear to be from a working class background. A comment was posted onto the fanpage, specifically talking about the song we have chosen to produce a video on saying, "Stay positive always gets me up and moving on a hungover monday".


The magazines the bands appear in is a great way of finding out the consumer audience of the band. Typically the bands that appear in the magazine NME will interest the reader, therefore the majority of people reading the magazine will be interested and fans of the streets. The article i have placed into this blog was one of many that the streets have appeared in, The Streets have appeared in NME on numerous occasions and have made the cover a couple of times. Just as some background information, the NME (New musical express), is a popular music magazine in the UK that has been published every week since March 1952. Its a magazine which originally focused on punk rock, but in todays issues, many bands from the "indie" genre of music can be found.

I visited http://www.nrs.co.uk/ which is the national readership survey website. On this website I managed to find statistics which show how many people buy and read the magazine and the background on the consumer. Approximatly each week, 325 people read the NME, 218,000 of these people are from a higher status working occupation. Examples include people who work in management of companies and people with office jobs. 107,000 people who read the magazine are from a working class background, so people who work in factories and labourers. This is an interesting statistic, and does not support the ideology of what we found on the facebook fan page. If i were to make a prediction i would have assumed more people would have come from the working class background, however different articles are produced every week containing different bands which can appeal to peoples varying musical interest. I believe the issue was to contain an article on the streets, that week more working class people would purchase the magazine, as that is the target audience of the band.

294,000 people out of the 325,000 consumers are aged between 15 and 44, with only 31 consumers being aged over 45. This is not a suprising statistic, i believe due to the NME wanting to be current and up to date with recent and upcoming bands, this would appeal more to younger people who are from the same era as the bands being published in the magazine. For someone over 45, they are more likely to not be interested in upcoming bands as they already have bands that they enjoy listening to from a different era to compare the musicians in the magazine with. In terms of gender, 241,000 of the consumers who buy the magazine where male compared to only 84,000 women. This suggests the bands that the magazines choose to publish, for example the band we are looking at, appeal more to men. This is understandable, with the bands featured commonly producing songs which contain profanity and are on subjects which women may find offensive. For example the streets produced a song called "Fit but you know it", talking about women being teases and self-loathing. Therefore if this type of band are being featured in the magazine, women will not want to read it.

Furthermore, i visited the website http://www.nme.com/mediapack/ for further information on the consumer audience. This paticular website focused more on the people who visit the NME website instead of purchasing the magazine. Therefore it is providing me with a different statistic and a more detailed view into the consumer. The NME website is europes biggest and most viewed music website generating over 1.3 million users and 13 million website hits. 63% of these consumers visit the website at least weekly or more showing that the website is succesful in capturing peoples interest, leading them to check the site on regualr occasions. In terms of the demographics, 65% of the website consumers are male, with 50% being aged 16-24, supporting the statistic of the people who buy the magazine. Suggesting that the same people who buy the magazine will additionally visit the website. 23% of the consumers are aged between 25-34 leading to the assumption that the magazine and website both attract a younger audience. The job occupation of the website consumer is mainly from a higher status job occupation, with 79% of people working in management or offices.
The website has a short description of the type of personality expected of the consumer. The consumer is suggested to be passionate about music and as a result are more responsive to brands an advertising. Another website which proved helpful in me collecting research into the consumer was http://www.ipcmedia.co.uk/. This website claimed that the median age of consumers was 23 and that the consumer has a strong relationship with NME and completly trust the brand. It provided information such as the consumer is influential when buying mobile phones and that they are twice as likely to convince friends and family which mobile phone is worth getting. It also stated that the consumer is completly obsessed with music and that they rely on the editorial and the adverts to keep them up to date with new music, the knowledge they posses makes them superior when it comes to music in friendship and peer groups. Furthermore, when concerning film and DVD, NME readers enjoy watching films both at home and at the cinema. They tend to buy a new DVD every month which is higher then the national average. I feel I have now gathered enough information about my target audience to produce a succesful video that would appeal to such individuals.

Tuesday, 21 September 2010

Permission

In this section of my blog, i am going to send an e-mail to the record label of the streets asking for copyright permission to produce a music video using thier song. Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.The copyright laws are set-up to promote the creation of new things and ideas.

If the laws didn't exist then some people might not be willing to share their ideas and we would have fewer new ideas. So copyright is basically needed so people don't steal other peoples work. In terms of the music industry this is vital in meaning that other acts don't copy parts of other peoples songs or lyrics, to give each band a unique name and unique music is being created specifically to that band. For example if an act wants to sample part of a song from an older generation, as they often do, they must first gain a copyright grant from the other acts label and the act themselves. Here is t
he e-mail i prepared to send to the streets record label, who are 679 recordings who are an indie label based in London belonging to the warner music group.

Please click the image to make larger







Thursday, 16 September 2010

Song Choice

The song we have chosen to base our music video on is a song by a band named The Streets called "Stay positive". The streets are an english based band lead by the notoriously recognisable Mike Skinner. The song is a track that was designed to brings peoples problems into perspective, Mike Skinner claimed it was created to read the minds of people with problems and lyrically confess them back to them.

It is a song that is very deep and meaningful, I believe the best videos in the industry are ones that are created in mind of the lyrics, which means the lyrics have to have meaning to create a justifiable video for the song. The Streets are a band which always create songs on this level of meaning which is why we decided to look in more detail at the band and eventually select this song.Potential choices for videos for us where all english based artists, we believed choosing an english artist would make it easier for us to produce a video using english actors and an english setting. We contemplated using songs from Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris, however as soon as we heard the song by the streets we both decided it would be the right one to use as we both enjoyed listening to the song. To follow are the lyrcis to the song..


Cos this world swallows souls
And when the blues unfold
It gets cold, burns holes
You're going mad
Perhaps you always were
But when things was good you just didn't care
This is called irony
When you most need to get up you got no energy
Time and time shit'll happen
The dark shit's unwrapping
But no-one's listening your mates are laughing
Your brethren's fucking and then you start hating
Your stomach starts churning and you mind starts turning.
So smoke another draw
It won't matter no more but the next day still feels sore
Rain taps on your window
Always did tho but you didn't hear it when things were so-so
You're on your own now
Your little zone you were born alone and believe me you'll die alone
Weed becomes a chore
You want the buzz back so you follow the others onto smack

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

Feels nice and still
Good thing about brown is it always will
It's easy, no-one blames you
It's that world out there that's fucked you
You're no less of a person and if God exists
He still loves you
Just remember that - the more you sink the further back from that brink
Maybe you've lifetime scars and you think tattoos might be more fitting
But who's picking?
Searching for yourself you find demons
Try and be a freeman and grasp that talisman
Cos your the same as I am
We all need our fellow man
We all need our samaritan.
Maybe I'm better looking than you tho
Maybe I've got more dough - but am I happier... no.
Get the love of a good girl and your world will be much richer than my world
And your happyness will uncurl

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

Stop dreaming
People who say that are blaspheming
They're doing nine to five and moaning
And they don't want you succeeding when theyve blown it
And you idols - who are they?
They too dreamt about their day
Positive steps will see your goals.
Whether it's dollars or control, feel the gold.
I aint helping you climb the ladder
I'm busy climbing mine.
That's how it's been since the dawn of time
If you reach a cul-de-sac
The world turns it's back
This is you zone, it's like blackjack
He might get the ace or the top one
So organise your two's and three's into a run then you'll have fucked him some
And for that you'll be the better one
One last thing before you go though
When you feel better tommorow you'll be a hero
But never forget today. you could be back here
Things can stray
What if you see me in that window?
You won't help me I know.
That's cool, just keep walking where you go.
Carry on through the estate, stare at the geezers so they know you aint lightweight
And go see your mates
And when they don't look happy
Play them this tape

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

I hope you understand me
Just try and stay positive
I aint no preaching fucker and I aint no do-goody-goody either
This is about when shit goes pear-shaped
And if you aren't or ever have been at rock bottom then good luck to you in the big wide world
But remember that one day shit might just start crumbling
Your bird might fuck off or you might loose your job
It's when that happens that what I'm talking about will feel much more important to you
So if you aint feeling it, just be thankfull that things are cool in your world
Respect to BC
Positivity
Positivity

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

Due to the length of the song, at this stage of the planning process, the verse highlighted in red is one we are considering taking out of the song to avoid the video being too long. The final decision about whether or not this will go forward will be discussed later in the blog

Exploring Music Video

To gain an insight into the world of music videos as a class we watched a documentary aired on channel 4 showing a countdown of the "100 greatest music videos of all time". For this section of the blog i have been asked to look at four music videos which are all in different in thier genre of music, the representation being shown by the video, the type of audience the video is aiming at and how it communicates a meaning across to the viewer. I have prepared a short video clip to go alongside each of the videos, which shows me discussing all of these factors in a video presentation. The four videos I have chosen to analyse are:

1. Run Dmc vs Aerosmith- Walk this way (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIbHPs_M55Q&ob=av2e)



2. Queen- I want to break free (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYL1vybRU4)



3. The Verve- Bittersweet Symphony (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx3m4e45bTo)




4. Fatboy Slim- Weapon of choice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF5cBoAV5Ys)


Introduction

In this piece of coursework, I will be producing a media portfolio in which I will be producing a music video as well as presenting my research, planning and evaluation over the course of the planning process. I will be building upon what i have already learnt in the AS coursework and developing my skills along the way, I aim to complete the year having learnt more about the concept of blogger as well as the music video industry in general.

This is a link to my previous AS coursework: http://lukesidwell.blogspot.com/