Representation

Female Representation in current Music Videos.

Male address music videos that draw fundamentally on the connection between male adolescent license and adult male rule by activating textual signs long common to patriarchal discourse. Reproducing coded images of the female body and conventionally positioning girls and women as objects of male voyeurism remain effective visual strategies for associating male adolescent desire with male dominance. Representations of females in music video become inflected in ways that facilitate their integration into the specific vision of male adolescent discourse. Girls, when they appear, are not represented as equal participants in the symbolic system, "the street," but function instead to delineate male adolescent fantasy. For example this is considerably noticeable in 2007 music video “Make it Rain” Women are being represented as sex objects and in a very derogatory manor. The male characters in this music video are shown to be very powerful. This contrast between the statuses of each sex has the affect on the audience that the men are further heightened in status and the women are further degrading. In retrospect it is unfair to suggest that women are all subject to the male gaze and that they are purely sex objects. As the hip hop industry is predominantly male, it is in a certain way a marketing tactic to increase the popularity of the record, therefore discarding the female controversy. However, there is some evidence of a male being degraded. In a shot of Fat Joe rapping, he has a member of his entourage holding an umbrella over his head. This job is associated with a low position, such as being a butler and therefore can be seen as quite degrading. The girls are showing as much skin as they possibly can with props of money raining down on them. All these factors combine to create a strong communication to the audience about how females are represented. These factors combine to make women seem inferior and as objects rather than people.

GoldBloom Representation in Promotional Video

imovie footage of Female Teen Fans...

BBC News -Do bands need the internet to make it big?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9422026.stm

The music industry has complained that the internet and piracy are killing music. But are they really? Or is the industry just having trouble adjusting to a changing digital landscape? The music industry is bigger than it ever has been - and that is excluding the 1.2 billion illegal downloads which occurred last year in the UK alone. 'David Reid' visited the Midem exhibition in Cannes to discover how bands are using new technology to break into the industry...

Small Indie Band's made it big through the use of digital technology are not really complaining... "If someone wants to rip off our album, do you know what, we are giving them away for free!" I feel that small band's in today's music industry obviously want to a make a profit, but they do not seem to be too bothered about piracy or scamming, they just want to make music and want people/fans to enjoy listening as much as they enjoy producing the music.

"Music is becoming like a digital photo, something you can't really own"

Current older artists believe that the internet is supposed to be like a radio, something to advertise where the bands are going to be, when they are going to play? However the internet has become the only source where fans can really interact with the band's and they WANT and NEED to know more nowadays to even consider listening to the bands, which is also FREE!

After watching this video clip, I felt that this quote "Internet can allow many more band's/artists through" really applied well to band's similar to GoldBloom. All through my research and planning the internet has been the reliable source for promoting, advertising and creating a fan base. Although the small bands will not be earning as much, they are doing what they love to do, which is to make music!

When it comes to the record industry, it's still a man's world – but how can this still be the case in the 21st century?

Why is it that Boy bands continue to pollute not just the musical industry, but also the entertainment industry as a whole? Statistics have proven that 47% of women in the music industry earn less than £10,000, compared with 35% of men. However female solo artists don’t seem to be struggling, it’s female band’s that are finding the jump to fame a little more difficult.

Is the Internet to blame?

Girls aged under 16 are properly the most powerful fans you will ever get. The female population tend to thrive on ‘BoyBands’ more than the Male population to female bands. Female fans tend to attach themselves to a specific band and follow that band through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and buying concert tickets to see them live to the point where they will become near hysteria! For example ‘One Direction’ a band found through singing contest show ‘The X-Factor’ recently one a Britz award for the best British Single. Now is this because of their ‘raw talent’ or because of their large hormone-crazed fan base? The recent boy group are a bunch of good looking lads who have an on screen personality that has captured thousands of girls hearts, furthermore they make songs which are cheesy enough for their fans to listen to on repeat everyday. We begin to believe that the music industry nowadays is not much about the talent anymore, and it has become all a popularity contest, which these boys luckily enough have fans that will not give up on them. Maybe the problem is that boy bands speak to their audience, whereas girl bands speak for their audience.

Recent Media - Britz 2012

The Britz stands for the British Phonographic Industry’s annual pop music awards, which is the British equivalent of the American Grammy awards.

I wanted to research information about the recent truth behind gender power within the charts in today’s music society. This information will back up the factual statement that Boy bands hold the dominant power over Girl Bands in today’s music industry, but do not necessarily hold the power over female solo artists.

British Album - Adele 21

British Female solo artist - Adele

British Male solo artist - Ed Sheerun

British breakthrough act - Ed Sheerun

British Group - Cold Play

British Single - One Direction

British Producer - Ethan Johns

International Female Artist - Rihanna

International Male artist - Bruno Mars

International Group - Foo Fighters

International Break Through - Lana del Ray

Critiques Choice - Emilie Sandez

Outstanding Contribution to Music - Blur

Theroetical Studies that I had considered throughout my research - The Interplay between Music, Audience and Media

Music is an integral part of most media. Movies, radio, video-games and television all depend on music as the core or the enhancement of their products. The music industry on the other hand is completely dependent on the media, as a promoter, user and distributer of it’s products. Most professional musical Artists/Bands communicate with their audience primarily via some kind of electronic medium and only a fraction of the audience is able to experience the Artists/Band’s live performance. The dynamics of this interplay between the audience, the music and the media can be illustrated by the ‘Audience - Media - Engine’ model. The model is constituted by four variables: Media Presence, Audience Reach, Audience Approval and Audience Action. Media presence represents the number of media outlets (television shows, radio shows, websites, video-games etc) where the Artist/Band appears during a specific period of time. A music firm may try to improve its media presence through various marketing and licensing activities. Audience reach represents the percentage of the total audience which the firm is able to reach through it’s media presence. For example, an appearance in a high-profile media event is able to reach a greater share of total audience than an appearance on a media event of less significant.

Audience approval is defined as the fraction of the entire audience who respond positively when they encounter the works of a musical Artist/Band. This variable is of course affected by several other factors, but the audience-media engine focuses entirely on how the audience approval is driven by the Artist/Band’s presence in the media.

Audience approval is important in both the old and new music economy, but it’s not able to pay the firms bills. Rather, it is various kids of audience actions that are traditionally supposed to generate the majority of the firms revenues. The actions spurred by the audience’s approval might for instance be the purchase of a song, music merchandise, concert tickets or some other music related product.

There are many kinds of audience action, which have the similar interplay with the media presence. The structure is currently manifested all over the Cloud, for example on social network services such as MySpace, Lala, Twitter or Facebook.

The links which connect media presence, audience reach, audience approval and audience action constitute a reinforcing feedback loop which plays a crucial role in the music industry dynamics. The loop may serve as an engine which gives rise to fads, brands, acts or genres. If the audience - media engine works against an artist or a music firm, it will be difficult to reach any kind of success.

The ability to control the audience-media engine has been at the core of music business strategy since the very beginning of the industry.

Hirsch Subsystem

Hirsch has identified four subsystems within the music industry, which the Artist/Band has to pass through to be able to reach the final subsystem, the audience.

The first subsystem is the creative sector, including the artist, the producer and the A&R agent. Hirsch states that the success of every performing Artist/Band is closely tied to the number of records that come to attention and are purchased by the public. The agents have a crucial job since they are the ones who will find the talents with artistic as well as commercial potential.

Promoters and distributors constitute the third subsystem. The function of this subsystem is to filter the output from policy-makers at the record companies. In the scenario described by Hirsch, there are far more record companies than there are promoters. In such a situation, the promoters add value to the process by selecting the songs which they expect to have the best chance of commercial success.

Music still has to be exposed to the audience in order for listeners to be able to determine it’s value.

Advertisers or Sponsors are properly even more important to the music industry today than they were forty years ago.

Music in the Cloud

‘The Cloud’ has been used as a metaphor to denote the Internet since the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. A cloud was considered to be a useful and vague enough symbol which could be used to summarize all the resources, cables and gadgets which connected the computers at the nodes of the network. The concept of ‘Music in the Cloud’ refers to the field of music to emphasize how the music industry during less than a decade has completely shifted it’s centre of gravity from the physical to the virtual - from disk to the Cloud. Many years have passed since the young music audience used to play a CD during a party, but today it is also less common that they play Mp3’s stored on their computers or ipods. Increasingly they listen to music from Youtube, last.fm, Lala, Sportify, remix.nin.com, or some other Web-based music service. Music is no longer something the mainstream audience owns and collects - Music in the Cloud.

YouTube (Media Technologies)

Internet video is a powerful medium. Many millions of people around the world watch millions of videos online every day. This is a growing trend that music artists/bands should definitely embrace. Using video is yet another way to engage fans and communicate who you are and you you have to offer as a musician/band.

How it works...

Once you register for a youtube account, you can upload video clips of 15 minuets or less in a variety of formats. After completing the band’s promotional video on imovie, I clicked ‘share’ which immediately linked me straight to youtube. The site then converts them to a streaming format that people can view on the youtube site itself or embedded on other web sites. There is a lot of competition for attention on Youtube, but some videos rise to the top and are seen by millions of people.

Real Media For example ‘Justin Bieber’ a regular American 10 year old, regularly posted Youtube clips of him singing cover songs from current artist. Due to large amounts of fans ‘following’ and high reviews on how many people have watched his videos, he was found by current R&B artist ‘Usher’, he was impressed with his talent just from the Youtube videos, Justin was signed immediately.

After uploading the imovie clip to youtube, I was disappointed with the blurred footage that had been created through the upload. As I wanted the vintage effect through the video, I purposely wanted the camera footage to look quite old and not as clear and precise as music videos are these days. I also wanted the unedited look to the video, similar to Rizzle Kicks ‘Mumma do the Hump’ video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4aw9kkXRJg