Website Marketing Analysis: Maroon 5

Here is the link to their website: http://maroon5.com/

Maroon 5 have just released a new album called 'Hands All Over'.

• Immediately when you go to their web address this 'exclusive' shop pops up in front of the site. This is direct marketing as it directly advertises all the products they have on sale to the fan who has visited the page.

• When you then close this window you are greeted by another extended banner advertising the album - with plenty of links for where to purchase the album, including iTunes for downloading and Amazon for the physical CD.
• This title page also displays the dates of their Autumn tour with direct links buying tickets and RSVP-ing on FACEBOOK so everybody knows that you are going! This allows users to widen the appeal of the band as people annoncing that they're going to the show might encourage their friends to go too. This is in a way viral marketing for the tour which will also generate word of mouth across the extremely popular social networking site.

 

The site that follows is very conventional and serves every purpose that a website should:

• It has links to Facebook, Myspace, and the Twitter of each band member as well as links to YouTube, Flickr, and the band's official store.
• Visiters are also get the opportunity to login as a member or sign up for this privilige - allowing them to be able to post comments on the band's page and use the band store. This is direct marketing as once a user has signed up, they will recceive emails about news, shows, and albums.
• The image of the band is made very clear and the new album theme runs all the way through in the colour scheme and constant images of the artwork.

• The institutions behind the band are also displayed at the bottom of the web page - AM Records, Universal and Octone.
• There are also links to various tie-ins with the band which are charities that the band support.

Overall the website follows all the conventions of a high-budget professional page with links to absolutely everything you could want. It is clearly aimed at a very wide audience but with a focus on teenages and young adults due to the massive interactive element with a big feature being the intergration with social networking sites. 

It's just a shame that the album has not lived up to its expectations, failing to impress many of Maroon 5's core fans...

Music Video: Vernallis Analysis

The music video for 'My Kz, Ur Bf' by Everything Everything conforms to the theory of Carol Vernallis very well...

Narrative:

• The video is a visual response to the music - abstract and alternative.
• There is not a balance between narative and performance as the only performance is the lead singer singing - we are not shown instruments and the whole performance is moving us through the narrative.
• The narrative is very fragmented and abstract in this video.
• The narrative does not really drive the video forward, but it is more the lead singer walking through this created world which drives the video.
• There's not really a clear resolution at the end as they just show that it's all a film set - it doesn't make the narrtive clear.
• The video is all about leaving the audience with questions - such as 'what was that about??'

Editing:

• The editing does match the music as it is on the beat and at the start of musical phrases.
• The video does break the rules of continuity, for example the first cut we see the 30 degree rule and the distance rules broken, as the camera goes from long shot to close up and moves slightly to the side.
• The video editing does demonstrate extreme cuts in time and space.
• The style of editing runs all the way through the video, as it is entirely made up of very long (in duration) shots.

Camera Movement/framing:

• Extremes are very common as the camera often moves from wides to close-ups.
• The camera movement style and framing runs throughout the video.

Diegesis:

• The diegesis is revealed very slowly - with us only seeing the full picture in the last shot.
• Actions aren't completed, the are very frequently interupted as something else suddenly is shown.
• There will definately be gaps for the audience when trying to understand the video as it is so abstract.
• There is lots of repetition in the camera movement in the video.
  

Music Video: Intertextuality

This music video for the award winning track 'She's the One' by Robbie Williams has one overall intertextual reference which unusually is to sport, as Robbie plays a figure skater at the olympics.

This is much more significant when you find out that this music video was released in the year 2000, aslo the year of the Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

So now the video has intertextual references to not only sport, in particular figure skating, but to television and directly to the Olympics.

The music video won the award for best music video of 2000.
The song won best single of 1999.

Music Video: Goodwin Analysis

The music video for Plan B's 'She Said' identifies with all the features of Andrew Goodwin's theory...

• The music demonstrates the soul/hip-hop genre very clearly. The soul is evident from the dancing of the many characters involved and his singing, and the hip-hop comes through during his body language when rapping in the witness box.
• There is a clear illustrative relationship between the lyrics and the visuals as it is all about him giving his evidence in court and what he's singing is what he is saying in the story-line - it's almost like a musical style!
• There are many close-ups of the artist Plan B, and this would be a requirement of the record label. His visual style also comes across well too, as he wear the sharp suit - the same one he wears for his live performances.
• There is a lot of reference to the notion of looking mainly between the two main characters - Plan B and the lady. There is also slight voyeuristic of the female body, but this is through the story-line and not stand-alone.
• This video contains lots of intertextual references, mainly to tv dramas and films treatment of the court situation, with classic questioning and trial scenes being drawn on. There is also a reference to the name of the character Plan B plays, 'Strickland Banks', on a wall in the court. This is significant as the album 'The Deformation of Strickland Banks' is all about this fictional charcter played by Plan B.
  

Music Video: Genre Analysis

This music video for Linkin Park's 'Faint' clearly represents the genre of the band...

Linkin Park's musical genre would be described today as Nu-metal with their most recent album having a lot more of an electronic and mainstream sound much to the dissapointment of many fans, however earlier in their history they would be described more as rap-metal/rock. This song, 'Faint', from their album 'Meteora' (2002) was one of many songs which had a hint of the electronic music that was to come for their next two studio albums.

The music video has lots of genre conventions of this rap-metal/rock style:

• The performance element - Instrument focus - guitars, drums, microphones, body language of performers.
• The huge audience - all going crazy, jumping etc.
• Lighting - LOADS of lights, but at the back so we get the focus on the silhouettes of the band and movement of the crowd.
  
• Dress code of band - all appear to be wearing black/dark, baggy clothing, jackets, jeans - typical of genre.
• Mis-en-scene of the stage - like old street, graffiti, etc. - very rock/metal themes
• Editing - lots of cuts to the beat, lots of shots of individual band members
• Slow-motion jumps, guitar moves etc. - typical of heavy rock.
  

Track Selection Ideas:

Our group have very different musical tastes so deciding on a track to make a music video with will be an interesting task. However, as copyright of certain tracks may become an isssue we have the very real possibility of choosing a track which has yet to be released by my own band 'Indecisive'.

I showed the track to Hugh and Ciara and they said that they really liked it and would be very happy to produce the music video for the track. The advantages of doing a music video for my own band is that we will not be restricted by copyright and so will be free to post it all over the web.My band have also won £500 worth of advertising on MUZU.tv which has over 100, 000 followers on facebook alone. The plan would be to release the song and the video simultaneously when it is finished and use the advertising to draw in a big audience. Our channel on Muzu.tv has already drawn in an audience of nearly 20,000 with a similar number of video views so this big promotion for a new single with a music video will hopefully bring in a very large audience.

The single is called 'Story Without Words' and could be described as upbeat soft-rock. The band consists of drums, guitar, keys, and bass and for this song the bass player is the lead singer, with all voices joining in in the chorus. I think it's a very likeable and catchy song but also contains quite an interesting love story in the lyrics. The song was written by the bassist, David Thompson.

Camera Test:

We took the camera that we could be using to the Seeward Studio and had a go using it, locating the slow motion and all the manual settings. We also have the idea to film in 21:9 widescreen (aspect ratio used in cinematic productions) but as we don't have access to a wide angle lense we will have to fake the effect by cropping the top and the bottom off the image. In this video we have done this very thing but it is a much wider ratio than 21:9 and looks a bit ridiculous. We will hopefully however fake 21:9 and make the final production look much more cinematic and professional - a lot of music videos these days use 21:9 widescreen.

Album Cover Analysis: MUSE [The Resistance]

MUSE are very well known for their extremely artistic and abstract album artwork. The typically intergalactic image shows a solitary figure staring at planet Earth from space surrounded by a kalaeidoscopic mosaic.

Although intended to be deliberately quite abstract, the image relates to the band's usual lyrics themes such as the world, politics, conspiracy theories, science fiction, conflicts, and space. It's also an immediate attention catcher with the use of bold colours filling highly defined shapes. This overall theme provides a brilliant potential for extending the album art to t-shirts and other merchandise which people will happily buy (for quite a bit of money) at their concerts.

Of course the MUSE logo again features prominently in the top corner of their album artwork and this has been the case for all four previous studio albums.

The artwork for 'The Resistance' won Best Art Vinyl 2009.

The back cover serves the main functions you'd expect of an album. It displays the track titles and numbers and contains copyright information.

The text on the back cover uses many different colours seen on the front of the album which creates a colour scheme for the album as a whole. You also see the colourful writing on the edges and all the writing is made to stand out through the use of a lightly coloured background.

On the back there is an image of the band walking down a street looking very casual but smart. The back and white image and casual nature of it show a maturity to this, thier 5th studio album.

Album Covers:

After selecting around 10 albums that I own, I noticed that there were lots of similarities; many conventions which most album covers use...

Conventions of Albums - Front Cover:

• Name of Band/Artist
• Title of Album
• Artwork/Image of Artist
• (Usually common for bands to have artwork and individual artists to have picture)
• Colour scheme
• Theme (Graphic/Icon/Style/Colour)

Conventions of Albums - Back Cover:

• [Name of Band/Artist]
• [Title of Album]
• Track Listing
• Copyright Information
• Continued theme/colour scheme/artwork
• Producer Information
• [Band/Artist Website]

Conventions of Albums - Inside Covers/Spines/Booklet:

• Pictures of Band/Artist
• Continued theme/colour scheme/artwork
• SPINE: Name of Band/Artist
• SPINE: Title of Album
• BOOKLET: Song Lyrics
• BOOKLET: Producer/Studio/Engineer/Mixer/Mastered by/Writing Credits/Copyright etc. Information.

Conventions of Albums - CD Artwork:

• Continued theme/colour scheme/artwork
• Name of Band/Artist
• Title of Album
• Copyright Information

From looking at the album covers you can also tell genres apart very well, as individual artists will tend to be dressed very significantly and the colour scheme with be such that it depicts the nature of the music. However with bands, it is harder to instantly recognise the genre as their album artwork tends to be more abstract, unique and orginal although still giving a sense of the sound you might hear.

Album Covers serve many different purposes. They sell the album, the band/artist as an image, and the work of the record label. People will enjoy looking at the artwork and/or images provided by the purchase of the album and it give the audience a deeper insight into the theme and meaning behind the music.

Music Consumption:

I listen to music a lot of the time, sometimes when I'm walking to school, on journeys, but mainly on the computer. Since Spotify has come along it has become the first thing I open when I log on. It gives me access to unlimited free streaming of almost any music whenever I want!

However I find that not all music is suitable all the time - it depends on mood. I also tend to go thorugh band 'phases', this is only really noticeable if a band I like have released an album - but I will mainly just listen to that. As a 'muso' I will know all the words in a day or two and really listen to everything going on in each track. I will be very influence in my own music writing by and new sounds or styles I hear, often always wishing that I had been the one to come up with that!I also go to gigs to see bands perform live, and I also perform live myself as part of a band. I think performing live is great for the audience as it's enjoyable and entertaining. It is also beneficial to the band aswell as performing live regularly increases our audience and keeps the excitement up.

For example, for the release of our first album on March 14th, we played a gig for 400 people whos ticket sales made us back the money on the cost of the gig and all the CD production costs. That night we made £600 on album sales alone showing that if people like what they hear live they will buy the album...

What Music means to me: early teens

Coldplay's 'Fix You' was probably the track that stood out the most from my early teens as it was one of the first songs that we learnt in my band and provided an excellent build-up for an audience at a gig who would always go crazy when it reached its climax where the whole band enter.


Coldplay - Fix You

What music means to me: childhood

When I was young, mainstream music was definatley a lot better than the mainstream music of today, with the late 90s to early 2000s providing us with some great songs.

I chose this song for my childhood as it was on one of the first albums I ever bought, it had a great music video, and it was the title track to ITV's 'The Premiership' which I watched every week!

What Music means to me: now

Music means a lot more to me now than it has ever meant before. Being a musician, a band member for nearly six years, and a songwriter, I have had the chance to create, perform, and produce lots of music. Now when I listen to music I always love to hear something new, original, creative and outstanding.

When I first heard this song on BBC Radio 1 I was blown away by its creativity and couldn't wait for their album release.

The album 'Man Alive' by Everything Everything was released at the end of august and is definately worth getting!