Due to digitisation, this has meant that artists and record labels have thought it beneficial to monetize other areas and I found a good artist example to note for how wide this move into branded merchandising is, Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden have set up a their own beer line called 'Trooper' (named after their 1983 single). They even set up a whole website dedicated to their beer line. This is an example of smart branding.
In the supermarket 'Auchan', in Luxembourg, you can buy 'Slayer' beer, 'Motorhead' beer plus some other branded wine/spirits. I have discovered that this is now a common strategy, especially in the heavy metal genre. You can even simply google 'heavy metal beer' and lots of examples come up.
I looked at Astrid S's Facebook page and I found some really useful videos for audience. They are videos which follow Astrid S's fans. I could tell that most of Astrid S's fans were females aged 15-24. Here is the 1st video that I found: This video follows some of Astrid S's fans waiting to see her live for her concert in Amsterdam, they are there at 14:12 when the concert is the next day at 09:00! The first person to be interviewed in the video had been there since 10:00 in the morning. ...
...
All the fans who were interviewed and shown on camera were female aged 15-24. These fans may have been dutch due to this specific concert being in Amsterdam but nevertheless they are all of similar ages and are all female.
I noticed that most of the females especially in this video had a 'Brandy Melville' or 'arty' style, Brandy Melville is a clothing store which has quite simplistic, comfy clothing for females which consist of the colours: black, white, beige, cream, burgundy, grey, light brown.
You can see in this image all the people who were waiting for Astrid S's concert in Amsterdam. You can actually see that there were some males there too in between the ages of 15-24. Not many males but some who have an aesthetic 'Brandy Melville' style also.
Here is the 2nd video that I found: This is a video created by Spotify, where Spotify invite the 20 people who have listened to Astrid S the most on Spotify to an exclusive meeting and intimate concert at Universal Music Norway with Astrid S.
...
...
All the fans who were shown in this video on camera were females aged 15-24 with one male who was between 15-24 also. These fans may have been all Norwegian since the setting of the video is in Norway. They all look Scandinavian.
I have also discovered that since Astrid is touring in mainly Scandinavian countries + The Netherlands at the moment, this could mean her primary target audience is females aged 15-24 from Scandinavian/European countries.
I also asked my friend James who he thought the target audience would be for Astrid S since I have shown him her music and her style, he responded with this. He said he has a 14 year old sister and an 11 year old sister and they don't listen to electropop genre music yet, but instead they listen to pop music for example Katy Perry, Selena Gomez and Marshmello.
He said he thinks the target audience for Astrid S is females aged 16-24. His 14 year old sister listens to rap and hip hop he said, this could relate to how hip hop and rap music is quite mainstream and at that age girls and boys don't know who they are yet and they are just trying to fit in with the mainstream crowd who listens to rap and hip hop. After all this research I discovered that I believe that Astrid S's target audience is females aged 15/16-24 with the secondary audience being males aged 15/16-24. This research has helped me a hell of a lot in determining Astrid S's main primary + secondary audience.
I did some research into vinyls and how they have been revived in the last 10 years. I first looked on wiki and found out that the vinyl revival is the renewed interest and increase in sales of vinyl records and that it has been taking place in the Western world since around 2007.
Vinyl records are in an anologue format and made of polyvinyl chloride. They were the main vehicle for the commercial distribution of pop music from the 1950s all the way until the 1980s-1990s when they were largely replaced by the Compact Disc (which were mainly in jewel cases - plastic casing). Since 2000, due to digitisation, CDs have been partially replaced by digital downloads. However, in 2007 vinyl sales made a sudden small increase. By early 2010 it was growing at a very fast rate. In some places, vinyl is now more popular than it has been since the late 1980s, though vinyl records still only make up a percentage of less than 6% of overall music sales.
Along with the steadily increasing vinyl sales, the vinyl revival is also clear in how there is a renewed interest in record shops (evident through how there has been the creation of the annual worldwide Record Store Day), how music charts have been created solely to vinyl and to an increased output of films dedicated to vinyl records and their culture.
Though many sales in vinyl are of modern artists with modern style or genres of music, the revival has also sometimes been considered to be part of a greater revival in retro style, since many vinyl buyers are too young to remember it being a primary music format. This can link into Simon Reynold's 'Retromania' theory.
In June 2017, Sony Music announced that by March 2018 it would be producing vinyl records for the first time ever since stopping the production of them in 1989. After reporting the decision, the BBC stated that "Sony's move comes a few months after it equipped it's Tokyo studio with cutting lathe, used to produce master discs needed for manufacturing vinyl records" but added that "Sony is even struggling to find older engineers who know how to make records".
I made a vodcast/video to explain about this initial audience survey I did on Facebook with the Facebook app 'Survey' and the results I obtained from it. I asked these questions:
Here are all the participants of the audience survey:
These were the results I got for this audience survey:
...
The definition of streaming, says Lifewire.com, "is a way of delivering sound - including music - without requiring you to download files from the internet".
Before streaming, many people downloaded audio files in formats such as MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG or FLAC. However, when streaming came about, people no longer needed to download music, but instead were able to listen to music almost immediately.
Streaming differs from downloads in that no copy of the music is saved to your hard drive. If you want to hear the track again all you have to do is easily stream it again, although, some streaming services allow you to both stream and download tracks - e.g. Spotify lets you download tracks so that you can listen to them when you don't have internet, since Spotify usually only lets you stream music when you have internet.
The way the streaming process works is that the audio file is delivered in small packets so that the data is buffered on your computer and played practically straight away. As long as there is a steady stream of packets delivered to your computer, you will hear the sound without any interruptions.
You can get streaming music subscriptions for example with Spotify or Apple Music. They have become very popular. Apple Music, which is available on Windows PCs and Mac Computers is a music streaming service subscription with more than 40 million songs that you can stream to your computer.
Source - https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-streaming-music-2438445 Examples of Streaming sites: Spotify Deezer Pandora Soundcloud Apple Music Amazon Prime Music Google Play Music Bandcamp Music Streaming Revenues I looked at the theguardian.com and found an article which discussed the surge in music streaming via digital services such as Spotify and Apple Music. "Platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify plus the revival of vinyl records are helping to make the fastest annual growth in music consumption since 1998. UK consumers have bought more than 135m albums in the last year across all formats (CDs, vinyl, digital downloads and streams from subscription services such as Spotify, Apple Music). That was a 9.5% increase from 2016, which is the biggest annual rise since 1998 when the charts were dominated by artists such as Massive Attack, All Saints and the Verve. For the first time, more than half of the total number of albums bought and listened to were streamed, according to the latest figures from the UK music industry trade body, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) based on data from the Official Charts Company".
I looked at billboard.com and found an article which described a bit about the music streaming revenue report for 2017: "US digital revenue grew 15 percent in 2017 from $5.65 billion to $6.5 billion. In 2016, there was a 53 percent increase in music streaming from $2.2 billion to $3.4 billion".
I also found a report called Global Music Report 2017: Annual State of The Industry by IFPI and I found the image that you can see on the right and the image that you can see below. I also discovered from this report that “in 2016, the global recorded music market grew by 5.9%, the fastest rate of growth since IFPI began tracking the market in 1997. This was a second consecutive year of global growth for the industry. Streaming has been the clear driver of this growth, with revenues surging by 60.4%. With more than 100 million users of paid subscriptions globally, streaming has passed a crucial milestone. It makes up the majority of digital revenue, which, in turn, now accounts for 50% of total recorded music revenues”.
"Streaming is now established as the
most prevalent and significant format
in the modern music industry,
fuelling growth in almost all major
markets and starting to unlock the phenomenal
potential within developing territories.
Physical sales
remain significant in
certain countries and
for certain artists, and
the vinyl revival has
been a headline grabber,
but streaming is
the growth driver that
is revolutionising the
business. By the end of 2016,
IFPI estimates that
the number of paid
subscription accounts
reached 97 million
worldwide. With the
rapid growth of family plans, where several
members of the same household can
share a family subscription, IFPI estimates
that there were approximately 112 million
users worldwide of these 97 million paid
subscription accounts". YouTube Red
YouTube has had a subscription option for a while (launched Oct 2015), but it seems there will soon be either 2 options or a renewed, rebranded option. YouTube Red is its current $9.99/month option, offering:
no ads
video downloads
exclusive content (which they're expanding)
the ability to continue playing YouTube when switching to other apps
POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE FOR MY MUSIC VIDEO:1. The use of colour correction - purple, pink colour correction (vibrant colours) 2. The use of slow motion 3. The on and off use of cutting to the beat 4. The deconstructionist element (e.g. in costume) Act: Tove Lo Track: Disco Tits Year: 2017 Director: Tim Erem Genre: electropop Main Audience: Females (16-24) There are 11 shots in the first 30 seconds. This estimates that each shot lasts 2.7 seconds. ...
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There is frequent use of low key lighting in this music video. At some points, colour correction/colour gels are used. This is a stereotypical convention of the electropop genre.
Dennis McQuail's 'Uses and Gratifications' can be applied within this music video. Three of the gratifications are present: personal identity, personal relationship and diversion/escapism. Females aged 16-24 can identify with the female singer, Tove Lo since she is the main protagonist in her video. This overlaps with John Berger's 'ways of seeing', which suggests that men act and women appear within the media - this implies that men have an active role in the media while women only have a passive role. This music video counteracts/goes against this theory by having a female as the main protagonist. Tove Lo has an active role in the music video by being the main female protagonist who leads the narrative.
Close Up of artist, Tove Lo lip syncing in the video
Andrew Goodwin argued that there are 6 key features/conventions of music videos, this theory does apply to this music video. These 6 conventions are: genre characteristics, frequent close ups of the artist, the notion of looking, intertextual references, relationship between lyrics and visuals and finally the relationship between the music and the visuals. There are frequent close ups of the artist lip syncing in this music video. Also, there are many electropop genrecharacteristicsshown throughout such as colour correction, striking costumes. There is also a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals for example when Tove Lo sings "Nipples are hard, ready to go" you see shots of Tove Lo dancing caressing her chest.
I have also seen other videos which have frequent use of colour correction such as Halsey's 'Ghost', Astrid S's 'Such A Boy', VENIOR's 'Sugar Rush' and Hayley Kiyoko's 'Cliff's Edge'. All these videos are in the electropop genre.
There is a lot of crude language and sexual imagery in this video; quite cleverly, a muppet character was used as the male partner to be able to get away with the sexual imagery and language. If a male human was used instead, there would have been obvious censorship issues. It has been signified through costume and body language, that Tove Lo is quite brallous. Laura Mulvey's 'male gaze' is exploited in this music video, through the costume that Tove Lo is wearing (a white short ribbed crop top), she isn't wearing a bra so you can see her nipples through the top. Also, you can denote that Tove Lo and the male character in the music video are performing sexual activities such as foreplay. There is one scene within the music video where Tove Lo is wearing just underwear - a pink bra with a red heart on each nipple. This piece of costume is deconstructionist and polysemic because the red colour of the hearts has sexual connotations and the heart shapes have playful innocent romantic connotations. You can also denote Tove Lo making a 'moaning face' several times throughout which further exploits this 'male gaze'. At the same time the 'male gaze' theory can be undermined in this video by the use of low-key lighting, the tattoos on her arms, punches the muppet in the video, has minimal make-up (for example, she is not wearing bright glossy lipstick), is wearing a nose hoop and her hair is messy - these things all de-glamourise, de-sexualise and masculinise her, providing a counter-normative feminine representation. Tove Lo is refusing to 'perform' gender (Judith Butler). Low key lighting is quite a countertypical thing to see in an electropop music video. Usually in electropop, the singer is made to look heavily glamourised (the skin is especially glamorised). The nose hoop she is wearing connotes rebellion and refusal to conform. There is only one take (at the end) which lingers on the male character for longer than a second, it lingers on him for 5 seconds. It is a shot of Tove Lo driving with him into the distance. Also, the fact that she is the one driving the roofless car throughout the music video also signifies how she is pushing against the normative representation of females in relationships or even of females in a car with a man (that females don't do the driving if a man is there). I also think the Bechdel test can be reflected on in this video. The Bechdel Test is a test to see whether a film has at least 2 female characters who have a name and talk about something other than a man. I think this music video passes the Bechdel test because Tove Lo leads the narrative on, she is actively deciding what is happening in the video, controlling what is going on (e.g. makes the muppet go down on her, makes the muppet dance with her). She also punches the muppet in the video and uses foul language which connotes that she is in control and that she is an assertive strong female who has taken on masculine attributes, which again pushes against the normative representation of females being weak, emotional and submissive. Although, there are some shots which specifically objectify Tove Lo which you could say goes against the idea that she is in control deciding things because the director probably would have decided on there to be objectifying shots within the video.
colour correction connoting states of drug use making colouring explicitly related to drugs club listening - colour correction - drug taking illustrating, amplifying the lyrics - cuts show her chest at that point classic example - is she a feminist or a post feminist - classic objectifying material quite direct the human in early 20's - ragged stubble - long hair male character is wearing similar clothes to her - dancing is similar - hair similar - gender fluidity - refusal to perform gender the equivalence in clothing mise-en-scene - reflecting no lingering on the guy - short takes she is looking in the mirror - body movement - framing - perfect for a GIF framing - she is on right one time then she is on the left he is on the left then he is on the right - playing around with gender fluidity - elements of discontinuity - not really in face - because of the visual similarity 180 degree rule spitting in it's face ghosting effect - 2 layers stacked up - opacity change - one is infront of the other cuts to beat - don't cut to the beat continuously ghosting - repetitive but useful effect - repeat effects vernallis - flashing effect with cut jump cut - super zoom in - uh uh uh uh - very long take - good little section
bridging shot of the interior of the bar and the interior of the room - they don't show the interior of the room straight away they show a CU of her (teen tween notion) at the end only take which lingers on him - 5 seconds
I have done research into the common amount of tracks that you will see on an album in the electropop genre. I looked at Halsey's 'Hopeless Fountain Kingdom' and 'Badlands'. Also, I looked at Melanie Martinez' 'Cry Baby' and Ryn Weaver's 'The Fool'. ...
Halsey's 'Hopeless Fountain Kingdom' album
...
Halsey's 'Badlands' album
...
Melanie Martinez' 'Cry Baby' album
...
Ryn Weaver's 'The Fool' album
... Most of the electropop artists I looked at had only EP's with 1-6 tracks on it. The artist I have chosen has several EP's but no full proper albums just yet as you can see here: ...
Astrid S's 'Bloodstream' EP
...
Astrid S's 'Party's Over' EP
...
Astrid S's '2AM' EP
...
Astrid S's 'Hyde' EP
... I also noticed that the 'Deluxe' versions of the album had a lot more tracks than the originals. I have decided on which tracks to include in my digipak for my artist, Astrid S. I picked my own personal favourite tracks of hers and a lot of her greatest hits. I haven't decided on the order of the tracks just yet but these are the tracks I have chosen:
1. Hurts So Good 2. Bloodstream 3. Does She Know 4. Hyde 5. 2AM 6. Breathe 7. Think Before I Talk 8. Such A Boy 9. Paper Thin 10. Party's Over 11. Jump 12. Atic 13. I Don't Wanna Know 3 Bonus Live Tracks 14. Hyde (Live From Studio) 15. Paper Thin (Live From Studio) 16. Hurts So Good (Live From Studio)
In the supermarket 'Auchan', in Luxembourg, you can buy 'Slayer' beer, 'Motorhead' beer plus some other branded wine/spirits. I have discovered that this is now a common strategy, especially in the heavy metal genre. You can even simply google 'heavy metal beer' and lots of examples come up. 
You can see in this image all the people who were waiting for Astrid S's concert in Amsterdam. You can actually see that there were some males there too in between the ages of 15-24. Not many males but some who have an aesthetic 'Brandy Melville' style also. 
Here is the 2nd video that I found: This is a video created by Spotify, where Spotify invite the 20 people who have listened to Astrid S the most on Spotify to an exclusive meeting and intimate concert at Universal Music Norway with Astrid S. 
I have also discovered that since Astrid is touring in mainly Scandinavian countries + The Netherlands at the moment, this could mean her primary target audience is females aged 15-24 from Scandinavian/European countries. 
I did some research into vinyls and how they have been revived in the last 10 years. I first looked on wiki and found out that the vinyl revival is the renewed interest and increase in sales of vinyl records and that it has been taking place in the Western world since around 2007.
Along with the steadily increasing vinyl sales, the vinyl revival is also clear in how there is a renewed interest in record shops (evident through how there has been the creation of the annual worldwide Record Store Day), how music charts have been created solely to vinyl and to an increased output of films dedicated to vinyl records and their culture. 
Before streaming, many people downloaded audio files in formats such as MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG or FLAC. However, when streaming came about, people no longer needed to download music, but instead were able to listen to music almost immediately. 
Streaming differs from downloads in that no copy of the music is saved to your hard drive. If you want to hear the track again all you have to do is easily stream it again, although, some streaming services allow you to both stream and download tracks - e.g. Spotify lets you download tracks so that you can listen to them when you don't have internet, since Spotify usually only lets you stream music when you have internet. 
I also found a report called Global Music Report 2017: Annual State of The Industry by IFPI and I found the image that you can see on the right and the image that you can see below. I also discovered from this report that “in 2016, the global recorded music market grew by 5.9%, the fastest rate of growth since IFPI began tracking the market in 1997. This was a second consecutive year of global growth for the industry. Streaming has been the clear driver of this growth, with revenues surging by 60.4%. With more than 100 million users of paid subscriptions globally, streaming has passed a crucial milestone. It makes up the majority of digital revenue, which, in turn, now accounts for 50% of total recorded music revenues”.
