TECHS - Bonuses of Digital Technology

The easy access to music videos on the landmark digital technology YouTube, and in the case they have been taken off/are not (which is sometimes an issue when you've found something useful and then it's gone, due to media regulation), makes the research and planning easier then when I had to look at whole films sometimes to research and find influences for my film opening.
That makes me be able to research and decide on what conventions I'm going to use or challenge, and thereby strengthening and accelerating my creativity.

However this not at an improvement on my side, if we had started with a music video and say we had to do a film promo package for our A2 coursework, this would have been a digression.

However, in terms of really intensively using Web 2.0 beyond the normal, official resources, I have defnitely made an improvement and have become more resourceful 

MV RESEARCH: Directors #1 - Jonas Akerlund

Jonas Akerlund in music video compared to film:

"Three levels of creativity"

Akerlund influenced by horror films 

Akerlund started out doing commercials when it was about to become big in Scandinavia, before they even properly 

He was mainly inspired by big commercial directors:

Jo Pitt, Tony Kaye (article in The Independent, showreel), Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Sean Paul Good

"Very inspired by how they told stories in a short time, there even shorter than music videos, with 30-60 secs"

Go the idea for the Smack My Bitch Up Video.

When shooting Smack My Bitch Up he was holding his back against the door to keep out the angry owners at him filming this violent sexual imagery, threatening to call the police.

The Prodigy rushed him to get a quick edit, which totally ruined the cut he showed them. They didn't want to use the video.

Thinking that the band would never like the video he just went on to finish it to perfection in his image, and added extra diegetic sounds of kicks and glass breaking. Says that back then that was never done, that the artist was too protective of the track (Vernallis being right in these cases of the dominance of the track).

However eight months before Anton Corbjin had done something similar with smashing bottle sounds in It's No Good.

However the band ending up loving the true cut, however it was met with controversy and first restricted then banned from MTV.

Says that the disruption of TRL's Number Ones and the exploding of the internet, music videos seemed pointless and they were about to give up on them..

and then Lady Gaga showed up. She changed how we look at music videos, and how to create a profile for an artist.

This also encouraged them to make really long videos

DISTRIBUTION RESEARCH - Economics of the Music Industry

BACKGROUND RESEARCH ON YOUTUBE ECONOMICS IN GENERAL:

Updated 7 June 2017
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/053015/how-youtube-makes-money-videos.asp

How artists are effected by from the digital disruption!??

3 Jan 2014
http://business.time.com/2014/01/03/spotify-and-youtube-are-just-killing-digital-music-sales/

15 February 2015
https://www.fastcompany.com/3042341/this-is-how-apple-beats-spotify

3 April 2015
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/03/how-much-musicians-make-spotify-itunes-youtube

19 August 2015
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081915/role-youtube-music-industry.asp

13 July 2016
http://fortune.com/2016/07/13/youtube-music-billions/

5 September 2016
https://www.fastcompany.com/3059507/artists-claim-youtube-pays-artists-less-than-spotify-are-they-right

20 September 2016
http://fortune.com/2016/09/20/riaa-youtube-streaming/

26 December 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/26/spotify-music-download-apple-itunes-streaming-vinyl

30 December 2016
https://www.fastcompany.com/3066532/7-ways-streaming-music-will-change-in-2017-after-another-crazy-year

16 January 2017
https://www.ft.com/content/cd99b95e-d8ba-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e

15 April 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/15/music-industry-youtube-video-streaming-royalties

(Updated) 10 July 2017
https://www.thebalance.com/music-industry-facts-every-musician-needs-to-know-2460726

17 August 2017
https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/17/youtube-music-pays-higher-royalties-spotify/

27 August 2017:
https://www.ft.com/content/50db5d76-89e2-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787

2 Sep 2017:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/02/six-things-taylor-swift-taught-music-industry-streaming-selfies

After a decade of plummeting revenues due to online piracy, the decline in CD sales and a lack of viable digital services, streaming has come of age for artists and record labels. The global recording industry body the IFPI and the UK’s BPI have both marked 2017 as a tipping point where revenue from streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer will surpass that made from traditional CD sales.
Global streaming revenues need to grow by less than 10% this year – last year saw a 60% surge to $4.6bn – to pass physical sales, which fell 8% to $5.4bn in 2016. Total digital income, including the rapidly dying downloads market, passed physical sales in 2015.
Swift’s new song, from the 27-year-old singer’s first album since 2014, was played more than 10m times on Spotify on the day it launched, breaking its record for first-day streams formerly held by her friend Ed Sheeran.
Swift staged a high-profile boycott of Spotify in 2014, withholding her album 1989 from the service and pulling her back catalogue in support of her contention that “music should be paid for”. But she relented in June this year, in part, some observers believe, because of the improving revenue picture.
“If you are a young pop artist streaming is at the centre of everything you do – it is not everything you do, but it is at the centre,” says Mark Mulligan, analyst at Midia Research. “It is the place to get discovered, drive ticket sales, [it] helps get on the radio and digital playlists, and it is becoming increasingly important as a source of revenue.”

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DIGIPAK RESEARCH: Concept Albums

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• I can't write an album as a whole, but I want to include interludes and have the concept that this could be some sort of narrative

Article on Pink Floyd's Animals, based on George Orwell's Animal Farm:

http://www.openculture.com/2017/04/pink-floyd-adapts-orwells-animal-farm-into-its-1977-concept-album-animals.html

A book looking at the concept albums as a whole:

Roger Waters And Pink Floyd

Beyond its elucidation and critique of traditional ‘notation-centric’ musicology, this book's primary emphasis is on the negotiation and construction of meaning within the extended musical multimedia works of the classic British group Pink Floyd. Encompassing the concept albums that the group released from 1973 to 1983, during Roger Waters’ final period with the band, chapters are devoted to Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut(1983), along with Waters’ third solo album Amused to Death (1993). This book's analysis of album covers, lyrics, music and film makes use of techniques of literary and film criticism, while employing the combined lenses of musical hermeneutics and discourse analysis, so as to illustrate how sonic and musical information contribute to listeners’ interpretations of the discerning messages of these monumental musical artifacts. Ultimately, it demonstrates how their words, sounds, and images work together in order to communicate one fundamental concern, which—to paraphrase the music journalist Karl Dallas—is to affirm human values against everything in life that should conspire against them

A udiscovermusic article looking at Kendrick Lamar's good kid, maad city:

The best concept records still have fabulous singles. There is a reason that people know ‘Juicy’ by the Notorious BIG, ‘Mercy Mercy Me’ by Marvin Gaye, or ‘Ziggy Stardust’ by David Bowie despite maybe never hearing the full albums that feature them. Those singles alone are strong enough that even someone with just a casual knowledge of the albums they come from, can’t deny the talent that is behind them. The same could be said for ‘B__ch, Don’t Kill My Vibe’ or ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’ from Kendrick Lamar’s major-label debut, Good Kid, mAAd City.
It’s been five years since the release of Good Kid, mAAd City, and the album not only holds a place in the hip-hop cannon but it shifted the culture. It’s even been incorporated into the curriculum in several universities.
The Good Kid, mAAd City cover art features a childhood Polaroid of Kendrick with his uncles and grandfather. There is a baby bottle, a 40-oz bottle and one uncle is flashing a gang sign. In the background is a picture on the wall featuring Kendrick and his father. Everyone’s eyes are blacked out. Speaking on the cover art, Lamar says, “That photo says so much about my life, and about how I was raised in Compton, and the things I've seen, just through them innocent eyes. You don't see nobody else's eyes, but you see my eyes are innocent, and tryna figure out what is goin' on.”
The title on the cover also reads: “a short film by Kendrick Lamar”. This is not an accident. Good Kid, mAAd City is cinematic and tells a gripping specific narrative. It’s a day in the life of the protagonist, K Dot, as he becomes Kendrick Lamar and in it, hooks up with his girl, robs a house, and goes through misadventures, which makes him question hood politics.

IMPACT OF DIGITISATION:
Audiences listen less and less to full albums, this was started through the CD player where you can jump to tunes, with the vinyl you could move the player but not to precise moments and you risked damaging the record. 
The advent of iTunes brought mass consumption, digital disruption, basically killing the album.
Pink Floyd wanted to avoid their concept albums with a single flow to be played randomly,
so they engaged in a court battle, but they eventually gave in, read more in this Guardian article:

The band's decision to offer fragments of their famous concept albums for 99p each on iTunes is likely to disappoint prog rock purists who applauded their stand against EMI.
During March's legal battle, lawyers for the band told a high court judge the tracks that made up Pink Floyd's seminal albums could not be unbundled and sold as individual downloads.
Robert Howe QC told the court it would have been "a very odd result" if band members were able to control how their music was sold in its physical form, but there was "a free-for-all with no limitation on online distribution".
The judge eventually sided with the band, telling the label it had to adhere to a clause in its contract with the group intended to "preserve the artistic integrity of the albums". He also ordered EMI to pay Pink Floyd's costs.

Now due to Spotify albums are less and less listened to in their entirety in one setting, however Brett Anderson in this interview thinks the concept album still has a loyal, strong following:



An article by The Independent: 

A Telegraph review of Night Thoughts and how the film and album together form a the concept of a narrative:

Playing behind a huge screen, Suede projected a film directed by Roger Sargent and written by Stephanie de Giorgio, with each narrative element operating as an enclosed promo to a particular song, whilst the whole built up to a dark and dramatic tale of love and despair.Perhaps because of its origins in the psychedelic pomp of the Sixties, the very concept of a concept albums tends to suggest florid excesses but Suede’s Night Thoughts essayed a grungy, trashy, kitchen-sink tone in keeping with their own origins as council estate aesthetes. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think I have ever seen so much vomiting in a music promo. It is probably not for everyone, involving psychological breakdown, murder and suicide, shot with a kind of Nan Goldin style low-life veracity. But songs and images worked in powerful conjunction, so each threw inner light on the other.

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MUSIC VIDEO THEORY #6 - Dan Miller

(Click here for source)

Floating somewhere between advertisement, video art and short film, the genre is a little tricky to pin down.

Dan Miller challenges that the track dominates the video, so goes against Vernallis's theory:

YouTube views do not necessarily translate into song sales. We should ask ourselves: are all Music Videos made to advertise a song? Music Video is much more than just an advertisement for a popular song – the way we define Music Video has not kept pace with the genre‟s evolution. 

He states we shouldn't ignore:

The abstraction, motion graphics and experimental nature of many music videos - both old and new.

Goes on to link the history of the development of the music video:

*To be added*

The decline of the monopoly of MTV due to digital disruption. (link to Exam Q1a Digital Technology, this gives me more freedom, I am part of the rise of the independent producers)

There has always been a tenuous relationship between Music Videos and record companies. The record company argument is typically “why should we fund something we can‟t directly make any money from?”.... Most unfortunately for the record companies, technological change has brought a solution to their problem they may not like. Better and cheaper home computers, software, sound and video equipment have seen a rise in independent producers who can now create professional-looking and sounding songs and Music Videos without record company money. (That's me!!!!!) 

Software and internet sites like iTunes, launched in 2001 and YouTube, 2005, have had a democratising effect on the digital media industry (MIT, 2010). Music Videos can now turn a profit themselves through advertising-supported models. Severing contracts with record companies, bands such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails can “finally have a direct relationship with the audience as [they] see fit and appropriate” (Reznor, 2007). Damian Kulash Jr., lead singer of the band Ok Go, highlights that music revenue models are changing and that a large portion of that band‟s income is now generated through sponsorship and advertising in the creation and online viewing of the music videos themselves – as opposed to song sales (2011). In fact, Ok Go „ditched their label‟ after a stoush with them over YouTube embedding rights (Nosowitz, 2010). 

In contrast to the Cambridge definition, it could be argued that some Music Videos are not designed to advertise a song, but to stand as works of art in their own right. As YouTube continues to champion viral media in the form of videos designed to promote themselves, the internet may be killing the TV star and the MTV era may be over. 

That last sentence was a reference to the ironic coincidence(?) that the first music video aired by MTV was "Video Killed The Radio Star", in that case music was being threatened by a visual disruption., and now TV is being threatened by the online digital disruption.

DIGIPAK RESEARCH - Interactive elements

David Bowie really saw the potential of digitisation and Web 2.0:

Jump – The David Bowie Interactive CD-ROM

[show]   Screenshot
Developer(s)	ION
Initial release	1994
Operating system	Windows, Macintosh

To coincide with the album's release, Bowie commissioned an "interactive CD-ROM" be produced based on the album. Released in 1994, the JumpCD-ROM gave users a chance to remake Bowie's "Jump They Say" video, remix "Black Tie White Noise," and explore a virtual world based on the album (including "hidden animations, sounds, pictures and other surprises.") It also included four complete music videos and excerpts from interviews with David Bowie about the creation of the video and album.^[27]The CD-ROM was not well received.^[28] Initially Bowie was excited with the project, expecting it to be "fully interactive, and have a nonlinear storyline" and allowing listeners to play it over and over and "never go through the same experience."^[29] The release did not live up to his expectations however, and Bowie was quoted in 1995 saying "I hated it. I absolutely loathed it. ... There were aspects of it I thought had potential, but then again, there was so much information on the disc itself that made the idea of anybody using it interactively a joke. Interactive, as far as I'm concerned, is when the person who's operating the computer has as much to say as what's on the screen. That is interactive. And at the moment, it's just the ABC options. Even the most sophisticated CD-ROMs are just 'Here's the hard information. Now, you can take one of these three steps.'"^[30]

3D in the album artwork:

The album cover, designed by Rex Ray with photography by Tim Bret Day and Frank Ockenfels, depicts the short-haired Bowie persona from the intensely energetic previous album Earthlingexhausted, resting in the arms of a long-haired, more youthful version of Bowie. Indeed, Hours is a much mellower album than its predecessor, and features numerous references to earlier parts of Bowie's musical career (particularly the early 1970s). For the album's initial release, a number of copies featured a lenticular version of the cover, lending a three-dimensional effect to the image. 

MUSICVID #14: Sigala - Sweet Lovin'

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The urban locations

ACT: Sigala 

TRACK: Sweet Lovin'

ALBUM: Non-album single

YEAR: 2015
GENRE: Tropical house
DIRECTOR: 
LABEL:  (owned by UMG)
SINGLE?: Yes

NARRATIVE ENIGMA

White fading in Extreme long shot, mist stopping full view of woman, signifying she is going to be important for the narrative. 

BRANDING

REPRESENTATION

ETHNICITY: ...

AGE: A late teen/early 20s something character reading a newspaper, very countertypical image, one would expect a smartphone, like the extra in The Pixies's Bagboy

GENDER: Only women dancing at the end.

DIGTAL TECHNOLOGY - Web 2.0

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Web 2 0 theories from DB3igs

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DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY - Differences between Analog & Digital

From an article by Diffen:

Analog and digital signals are used to transmit information, usually through electric signals. In both these technologies, the information, such as any audio or video, is transformed into electric signals. The difference between analog and digital technologies is that in analog technology, information is translated into electric pulses of varying amplitude. In digital technology, translation of information is into binary format (zero or one) where each bit is representative of two distinct amplitudes.

Analog	Digital
Signal	Analog signal is a continuous signal which represents physical measurements.	Digital signals are discrete time signals generated by digital modulation.
Waves	Denoted by sine waves	Denoted by square waves
Representation	Uses continuous range of values to represent information	Uses discrete or discontinuous values to represent information
Example	Human voice in air, analog electronic devices.	Computers, CDs, DVDs, and other digital electronic devices.
Technology	Analog technology records waveforms as they are.	Samples analog waveforms into a limited set of numbers and records them.
Data transmissions	Subjected to deterioration by noise during transmission and write/read cycle.	Can be noise-immune without deterioration during transmission and write/read cycle.
Response to Noise	More likely to get affected reducing accuracy	Less affected since noise response are analog in nature
Flexibility	Analog hardware is not flexible.	Digital hardware is flexible in implementation.
Uses	Can be used in analog devices only. Best suited for audio and video transmission.	Best suited for Computing and digital electronics.
Applications	Thermometer	PCs, PDAs
Bandwidth	Analog signal processing can be done in real time and consumes less bandwidth.	There is no guarantee that digital signal processing can be done in real time and consumes more bandwidth to carry out the same information.
Memory	Stored in the form of wave signal	Stored in the form of binary bit
Power	Analog instrument draws large power	Digital instrument drawS only negligible power
Cost	Low cost and portable	Cost is high and not easily portable
Impedance	Low	High order of 100 megaohm
Errors	Analog instruments usually have a scale which is cramped at lower end and give considerable observational errors.	Digital instruments are free from observational errors like parallax and approximation errors.

Wikipedia

ANOLOGY:

is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy.

DIGITAL:

usually refers to something using digits, particularly binary digits

• Digital Media:

are any media that are encoded in machine-readable formats.^[1] Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified and preserved on digital electronics devices.
Combined with the Internet and personal computing, digital media has caused disruption in publishing, journalism, entertainment, education, commerce and politics. Digital media has also posed new challenges to copyright and intellectual property laws, fostering an open content movement in which content creators voluntarily give up some or all of their legal rights to their work. The ubiquity of digital media and its effects on society suggest that we are at the start of a new era in industrial history, called the Information Age, perhaps leading to a paperless society in which all media are produced and consumed on computers.^[2] However, challenges to a digital transition remain, including outdated copyright laws, censorship, the digital divide, and the spectre of a digital dark age, in which older media becomes inaccessible to new or upgraded information systems.^[3] Digital media has a significant, wide-ranging and complex impact on society and culture.^[2] 

• Electronic media:

are media that use electronics or electromechanical audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created electronically, but do not require electronics to be accessed by the end user in the printed form. The primary electronic media sources familiar to the general public are video recordings, audio recordings, multimedia presentations, slide presentations, CD-ROM and onlinecontent. Most new media are in the form of digital media. However, electronic media may be in either analogue electronics data or digital electronic dataformat.
Although the term is usually associated with content recorded on a storage medium, recordings are not required for live broadcasting and online networking.
Any equipment used in the electronic communication process (e.g. television, radio, telephone, desktop computer, game console, handheld device) may also be considered electronic media.

DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/analogue

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/digital

TECHNOLOGY

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/analog-and-digital.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btgAUdbj85E

DIGITAL ALONE

http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/digital-technology

The effect of digital technology:
https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insight-outlook-how-digital-technologies-are-changing-the-way-we-work