Conventions of album covers

There are certain things that have to be on an album, and these regulations especially apply to the smaller artists who have less power. If an artist is extremely well established, then these rules can be bent quite easily, but if its a new-ish artist, even if they are classified as popular and well known, they will most likely have to have the things in the column bellow on their album cover. 

Front of Album	Back of Album
Name of band/artist (biggest part of the album, as the artist is the selling point) This is an example of how the artist name needs to be more obvious than the album name. Since this was the British group "Blurs" first big album, they had to go by this regulation of having the name of the band really obvious.	Track list – numbered and in order (font and track names will be conventions themselves)
Album name	Legal info – studio that made it, and the key people (people who made the music, people who produced it)
(Parental Advisory – if applicable)	Barcode

Album artwork notes:

 

-   Album artwork is very important as it is the first thing you see

-   The artwork can sell the product itself

-   It can also show the image of the artist

-   It helps to create and maintain the artist/bands image (star theory)

-   Can become iconic and a USP

-   Shows the genre (using conventions)

-   Can help target audience

-   Shows the ideology of the band or artist

-   Sells the physical music (like vinyl or CDs)

 

 

- The front and back of an album are connected – the artwork, the font, doesn’t have to be the exact same, or even the same image, but you will be able to tell that the front and back are connected

Album artwork can be very simplistic, or very complicated.

The impact of YouTube on music videos:

 

Music videos only used to be on shows like Top of the Pops on the television. Shows like Top of the Pops had very specific regulations or guidelines they had to go by, for example no profanity or sexual scenes were allowed to be exhibited in the music videos they showed.

 

 

Then, MTV came out in 1981 and it showed Music Videos as a more developed art, which not only added to the music, but could also be seen as a great representation of the artist’s work, separate from the music.

 

Despite establishing music videos as a separate, individual art from the music, MTV still had to go by similar guidelines as shows like Top of the Pops and so they still had their limitations. In 2005, YouTube was launched, and Top of the Pops went off the air, and it completely opened up the world of music videos. Since it wasn’t televised, it didn’t have to fit PG or family friendly regulations. Also, since anyone with a camera and a laptop could upload their music videos to YouTube, the music videos had to become more unique, and therefore had to be more out there and rule breaking, thus creating the music video artist. The number of music videos being produced increased massively. The music videos started to become not just a selling point of the music, but also began working as individual pieces of art that generate success. The video started to become half of the work, with the sound and the song being the other half. It was a chance for the artist to stand out, and to show what their image is. This is the artist “Post Malone’s” first music video, and I chose his first video because I want to see what image he was trying to promote at the start of his career. The song is White Iverson, and the video came out 6 years ago.

 

 

This video is essentially trying to show two things about “Post Malone”; he likes basketball, and he has money. The car and the big jewellery that he is wearing is him trying to show off his wealth and trying to create the image that he is successful. The shots of basketball nets and the fact he wears basketball shirts throughout the video shows that he likes basketball, and it also relates to the song.

 

 

Despite the video trying to show off his wealth, it wouldn’t of cost too much to make. The video tries to show off 3 different locations, but the basketball court and the desert are in the same place, and the only other location is an empty room with a red light, which means that they were able to present wealth, without spending too much for the music video, as he wasn’t a big artist back when this was made.

 

Goodwin’s Narrative Theory:

 

Andrew Goodwin had a theory that music video narrative could be broken up into three different ways, because the songs are made before the video is written. The first of these three ways of narrative is illustration, which is essentially when the video tells the story the lyrics are telling. The second type of narrative in this theory is amplification, which is where the images from the video amplify a deeper meaning from the lyrics that may not be seen if it was just the lyrics alone. Disjuncture is where there is very little connection if any between the lyrics and video, or when the video contradicts the lyric.

 

The song Charmless Man by Blur from the album Charmless man, and it is a great example of illustration.

 

This music video tells the story and shows the “Charmless Man” and presents him in the video exactly how he is described in the lyrics. This is a great example of illustration. Everything from the way he is dressed to the fact that “no one’s listening” to him shows that the video is purely exhibiting what the lyrics are describing.

 

The song Take Me to Church by Hozier is a great example of amplification in a music video.

The music video tells the story of a gay couple not being accepted which highlights a hidden meaning in the church. The black and white colourisation of the music video signifies the old fashioned and almost medieval homophobic perspective portrayed by the majority of the cast in the music. Also, it makes the video look darker, reflecting the intense, dark theme of the music video. The burning of the books and possessions of the gay couple at the end of the video also reflects the true horrific nature of the homophobia they are experiencing. This video is really trying to promote Hozier as an artist who is trying to put a stop to homophobia and discrimination in general.

 

 

The song Yellow by the band Coldplay from the album Parachutes. It is a great example of a song with a disjuncture form of narrative.

 

 

The music video clearly has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrics. The singer from the band (Chris Martin) is just walking down a beach on a rainy day. In fact, the dark and miserable weather almost juxtaposes the uplifting and happy lyrics from the song. This shows that this is an example of a disjuncture narrative in the music video.

Dyer’s Star Theory:

Richard Dyer’s Star theory suggests that celebrities are essentially products of institutions. He believed that celebrities were made to seem like real people, so that they could become more relatable to their audiences and therefor make their products and the institutions products more appealing for purchase. Within this theory, he breaks it down into three sections or parts: Stars (celebrities) as social commodities, as images and finally as signs. To show this, I am going to take the British band “The Beatles” and use his theory to analyse them. The Beatles image changed over the time that they were together, and so I am going to pick a specific time. In May 1967, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. This was an entirely new image for the Beatles. At this point their image was an alternative rock band, and it has been constructed through the vast use of colour and a chaotic album cover. It was also conveyed in their music, as they used new and different recording techniques to develop their sound into something more complex than they achieved previously. This paired with the colourful and psychedelic image that the album cover was conveying set this image in stone.  

 

 

This image is further enforced in some of their music videos. Despite a lot of their songs not having music videos due to the technology of the time, “A Day in the Life” is one of the songs from the album that does. This video has shots in slow motion, and flashing lights, and lots of colour which reinforces the colourful and alternative rock n roll image that they were trying to convey.

 

 

 

Also, despite being a band well before social media, they still convey this aspect of their band a lot on Instagram. They especially show behind the scenes of the music or behind the scenes of the music videos, and these photos have a big contribution into the bands image, as it shows that they aren’t just this psychedelic band in front of the camera, but they also are behind it, meaning that it truly is what the band had become, which reinforces that idea more and more. Despite this image of the band being very alternative, it didn’t seem to be at that time, which allows them to become more relatable to the audiences. Paul McCartney expressed this when he said, “The mood of the album was in the spirit of the age, because we ourselves were fitting into the mood of the time”. This shows the bands image to be relatable but also interesting and influential for the audience, as The Beatles represented this image in every way they could.

 

 

Social Media Strategies:

In the past 20 years the strategy for bands getting recognised and getting big changed dramatically. Since computers had become cheap enough to be found in almost every household, and powerful enough to write music on. The huge money required turned into just a small amount for a computer, and everyone could be writing music on a computer, instead of having to be recognised by an AR, and then taken to an expensive studio. This essentially gave anyone with the motivation the opportunity to produce their own good and high-quality sounding music. Also, music talent shows such as “The X Factor” and “The Voice” made the story of the auditioning musicians the main product, with the music as a side note. This is why before an audition, there would be a mini interview asking about why the person was on the show, and this would make the audience connect with the musician on a deeper level, as they knew them better, and therefore make them want to go through regardless of the music. To make a social-media account that is successful within its own right, we need to understand and use a few main rules. Firstly, we need to apply storytelling, not promotion. A social media audience is much more likely to follow along someone who has a story to go through, and who is a real person. We need engagement with our audience through the social media accounts, which involves things like funny pictures or videos, or perhaps even memes.

 

 

This makes the audience come to the social media account. After engagement, the second part of the social media campaign is the storytelling, which is showing the social media audience little snippets of the artists route to being a successful musician.

 

 

 This includes videos or pictures of them in the recording studio, or pictures of them writing music and so on. The final thing that needs to be accounted for in the social media campaign is promotion, and it is the one that needs to be kept at a minimum. People do not like a lot of promotion on a social media account, as it can get irritating, and so it needs to be limited. However, if you promote certain products rarely, it works in your favour, as your fan base is much more likely to purchase something you have promoted if you don’t promote things that often. So, to sum up, a social media campaign needs to have engagement (50% of the campaign), storytelling (30%) and finally promotion (20%). Captioning posts is also very important because it gives the audience context to what you have posted, and it gives yet another opportunity to engage with the audience, as you can leave questions for them to reply in the comments, or just let them know what’s happening in the picture. I am going to try this out by recreating 3 mimic social media posts and captioning accordingly, one post for engagement, one for storytelling and one promoting a product that I use.

 

 

Caption: Who's a good boy?

 

 

 

Caption: Something in the mix. What do you guys wanna hear? 🧐

 

 

 

Caption: I have honestly never had such clear tasting sparkling water. I absolutely love this stuff guys. Use the code Bashy15 to get 15% this sparkling water and let me know what you think 👊.

How a band gets signed by a record label workshop:

 How a band gets signed by a record label workshop:

 

-   To understand why some bands will get signed and some bands don’t, we need to understand A&R.

-   A&R means Artist and Repertoire, and so an A&R executive is someone who would look for new talent and help them to develop themselves into becoming good performing and recording artists.

-   For example, A&R executive Michael Alago would go out to every New York City bar and/or nightclub looking for new bands and artists to find someone who would work.

-   He would often sign band that maybe didn’t have an awful lot of their own material, or a massive musical talent, but would sign them purely on how they looked on stage, or on their sound.

-   Now, music streaming platforms such as Spotify, or Apple and Apple music collect data from what is being listened to the most at that point, so that it is easier to find new artists as it narrows down the genre that is trending at that particular point in time.

-   So essentially, in modern times the bands that get signed are already on the up of a trend, and already have value, unlike the bands that Michael Alago was signing. But the things that originally made those new artists stand out from the crowd are the same as the things that Michael Alago looked out for in the 80s.

-   With my Artists, we have to find out what it is that makes them special and make that coincide with the music they are playing.

-   I am going to use a character sheet and describe what it is that makes my artist special. I am then going to try and find some unknown music to try and match up my character with it. To find the music I am going to use bandcamp.com and richerunsigned.com.

 

 

               -   The song that I am using to go with my musical character is “Starting a New” by Dishy Tangent.