DISTRIBUTION - Self-Producing + Self-Distribution

An interview with someone with experience of self-producing and self-distribution

Arcade Fire, Canadian indie art rockers, are an act who self-produced their debut EP and first two albums. With their third album they co-produced it with a producer, then the fourth with two, and the fifth with a number of producers involved.

This coincides with some criticisms that they having been verging to the mainstream.

With James Murphy however they certainly didn't let their artistic intentions be made less clear (Rolling Stone article)

James Murphy wasn't sure what to expect when the Arcade Fire arrived to record with him at DFA Records' New York studio in March. "There's a lot of them, and they're mostly self-produced – like, they don't need a producer in a certain way," Murphy tells Rolling Stone. "So I didn't know how it would go."

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WEBSITE General: Charlie Puth

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The splashpage ( video playing in the background)
• Mention a support act in the touring information (choose an emerging band today that has some similarities, The Duke Spirit would quite likely be a good choice as Brett Anderson is a huge fan of them)
• I do not want to use use white as the main background colour as has been done here.
• Integration of social media
• Use of social media images in the gallery, more than has been done here

ACT: Charlie Puth
                (website link)

TENURE: 2009 - present
CATALOGUE: 1 album + 3 EPs

GENRES: Pop, Pop rock, R+B

LABEL: elevenelven, 
                Artist Partners Group, 
                Atlantic

BRANDING 
Use of several images from social media, and also use of the latest music video.

OVERALL KEY RECURRENT DESIGN FEATURES 
COLOUR: Black and white theme
SHAPES: Squares around key words, these are more visually striking and visible than words alone.
IMAGES: Not a lot of images used, very bare with the white

LIKELY TARGET AUDIENCE/S; MODE OF ADDRESS 
Teens with the images of the singer, however there could have maybe been more effort to make it more colourful, and to expand the gallery with more photography, such as the images from 

LANDING PAGE 
The artist's newest video, How Long, is being played, without sound. Includes multiple links to save and order the music.
A section of the video where there is bright lighting has been chosen, so to glamorise the artist. Also, he is laughing and there are elements of slow-mo, so this covers the cute factor

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You don't have to click to get to the main page, it stays there very briefly

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HOMEPAGE LAYOUT  


TOP FRAME/BANNER 
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NAME/LOGO 
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PAGES/TOP LINKS LIST 
Instead of being top they are below on the landing page, however once you click on the links they switch to above.

AUTO-SCROLLING GALLERIES? 
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PAGE TYPE: MERCHANDISE/SHOP 
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E-COMMERCE 
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PRESENCE OF MUSIC 
These links to music are provided as icons:

YOUTUBE: 
...

Further subscriptions , along with social media links.

As seen below, Where the video of the current video will start playing, so the newest single is being pushed without any further clicks.

SPOTIFY: To start following, the free Spotify version.

Again the new single "How Long" is being pushed

SOUNDCLOUD:
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Left same image as on his Facebook account

APPLE:
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The latest album being pushed, and the latest single being the first one on Top Tracks:

DEEZER: 
You get short exerts of multiple tracks 

Head cropped off for effect of narrative enigma

TOUR DATES
The "Show more function", starting with three tour dates
There is a VIP, signifiers of a more commercial approach?
Support act is mentioned (Hailee Steinfield)

GALLERY?
Part of the Links List, billed as "Photos", is less high art than Gallery, which also accounts for the content which consists of four photos, three looking amateurishly like selfies. Though this still a part of convergence, using photos taken by yourself instead of employing a photographer
There are many more photos on his Instagram account.

PERSONAL INFORMATION? 
None included.

CONTACTS/ACT LINKS? 


ARCHIVE? 
any use of clickable calendars?

GAMES? 
Not included.

NEWS
The same colour design, with a title, date and brief sentence description ended with a hyperlink to the article made most visible through the shape.

LANGUAGE:
...

MEMBERSHIP/SIGN-UP? 
You submit your e-mail.

VIDEO/VINES 
A YouTube link, no Vimeo or Dailymotion, not used by musicians a lot.


SOCIAL MEDIA 
No feeds. No Snapchat, Tumblr or Google Plus.

FACEBOOK: Image of himself relaxing, a "chilled guy".
*Include screenshot*
TWITTER: Image of himself as a young child used as profile picture, cute factor.

Filter fits theme of nostalgia,
mouth wide open with tongue showing playful boy

INSTAGRAM: When he was younger and hair colour different, slightly dashing.

OTHER EXTERNAL AGENCIES 
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FONTS + FONT VARIATION 
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BEST + WORST FEATURES 
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FAULTY/OUT-DATED CONTENT? 


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DIGIPAK #7: David Bowie - Outside

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• A shorts story to set out the mood
• The very artistic lyrics 

ACT: David Bowie
FULL TITLE: 1. Outside
YEAR: 1995
TYPE OF ALBUM: 19th studio album (Concept album)
DESIGN: Denovo, David Bowie
PHOTOGRAPHY: John Scarisbrick (Pinterest with early drafts)
GENRE: Industrial rock, Art rock
LABELS: BMG/Arista/RCA (Europe)
                    Virgin (US)

SINGLES:

This Discogs entry provided the most images.


BACKGROUND:

• This album is similar in its dystopian theme to his 1974 Diamond Dogs
• Bowie by now had come back to a more creative renaissance, after going for a more mainstream phase in the 1980s, which disappointed the critics and eventually
• So with this debate of high art vs popular culture in his mind, he created the concept for a concept album which deals with the narrative of the degradation of art 
• 
  

The whole arty design fits well for the philosophical debate of the degradation of art.

FRONT COVER

BACK COVER





INSIDE
Bowie created a whole world.

BOOKLET

Really creative lyrics:

MV RESEARCH - Theatre Influences

STEVEN BERKOFF
Steven Berkoff's play Decadence, extreme satire on the upper class.

Its again bringing in high art to low art of pop music, what Bowie wanted. Postmodernism.

The classic fox hunting scene

The scene in the film version. (this Variety article links it to a satire of Thatcher's Britain)

GRAND GUIGNOL RELOADED

Characters playing cards at a table.
Someone holding a plotplant, it's their most valuable possession, their baby. The facial expression of the actor is extremely important here.

RANDOM IDEA #8 Overcontrolling Music Vid Director, Powerless Band

Reflect that in the website, background info, not really happy with being forced to do all these videos the way the directors/the company wants, like Duran Duran.

UPDATE WITH SUEDE:
Have Brett Anderson criticise the director that he is making it too poppy. 

ARTIST VID #5 - Attitude

POSSIBLE INFLUENCES:

• The character of the drag as a recurring character, like Bowie's Pierrot, Major Tom + Thin White Duke

Perfectly capturing the theme of
attitude

TRACK: Attitude

ALBUM: Non-album single, although later released on the   compilation album Singles

YEAR: 2003

DIRECTOR: Lindy Heymann 

LABEL: Columbia Records (owned by SME)

YES: Yes, as stated above, also later added to the collection of singles

Music Video - SUEDE Attitude starring John Hurt from Lindy Heymann on Vimeo.

BACKGROUND

• The final release before the band broke up, it received positive reviews for being the best Suede song in years
• Without the band, because they felt their image maybe wasn't effective enough
• This does not appeal as much to teenage audiences as all their other videos 
• The casting of John Hurt as the drag character is most likely due to his early role as Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant, which would also have been playing when Brett Anderson was a child, he might have seen it
• Hurt is not a big A-List star, but a respected character actor, has Suede going back to a more arthouse style 

TITLES:

No titles.

DIEGETIC INTERRUPTIONS:

None at the beginning, prolonged silence in the middle 

He sings the song in the end, we hear sounds of the street. (parden the pun)

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS + VISUALS

"She give a little bit of attitude" - Body language 
"Opening doorways for me" - The moment we get two close-ups of Anderson, giving the song the meaning of the lyrical I being equalled with the author.

NARRATIVE ENIGMA

Narrative enigma, two forms, making the audience aware of it and then making an apparent anchor which is then disproved. The first with just seeing the feet, you think it's just pure building up, just withhold the second fooling the audience in thinking that John Hurt's character is Brett Anderson through having his back turned to the camera, low-key lighting on him.

AUDIENCE - The dance factor

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING:

• I included clapping for my lead singer as a simulacrum of Brett Anderson's live performances, during touring fans can join in clapping, ads a feeling of community to the audience

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

• The dance the protagonist does when imagining the band playing could be mimicked, but it's very unmainstream, like the dances that Kate Bush does
• The clapping of Dave Gahan and Brett Anderson can be very easily mimicked

Nostalgia for the Harlem Shake:

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1426556

Maroon 5 have used Musical.ly heavily to get their tween audiences to participate in dance synch competitions to their most recent singles for their sixth studio album, Red Pill Blues.

CLAPPING 

MORE NICHE DANCES

KATE BUSH

Babooshka, carefully choreographed to the song, both the track and the complicated dance moves would not hold with the attention span with most teens and Tweens today.

DAVID BOWIE

His dances are quite abstract, like the Squirrel in Fashion and the Japanese theatre-influenced 

Choreography in the Diamond Dogs tour, like being chained, S&M connotations.

ARTIST RESEARCH - The Music

The style, the themes/issues/topics that are spoken about in the lyrics, and the tone of the music.

In 2013 a BBC interviewer said. "Not a concept album, because that's not cool."
I think he does like concept albums, as seen in this article: 

When we got back together it was important we didn’t end up just playing the festival circuit. Anyone can turn up and play the old songs but we wanted to move forward and make new material that stretched us creatively. Making Bloodsports and the reception it received suggested we had a future, that people were still listening.”
Mat Osman, Suede’s bassist, agreed: It’s gratifying to know that people still care. The warmth of the reception since we got back together has been genuinely heartening. You realise how precious it all is and it has encouraged us to be braver. I’m really proud of this record, I think the last three tracks, the end sequence, are as good as anything we’ve ever done.

I couldn’t have come back without an album. After a couple of years doing greatest hits tours with Suede we got to a point where I was like ‘we can’t do this anymore unless we’ve got new music’. It just feels like you’re going round in circles. I failed to be able to look at myself in the mirror with any respect so it was very important for us to make ‘Bloodsports’ to justify carrying on. I don’t think we’d have carried on otherwise, we’d have called it a day again. It was a lovely thing to find out we could make great new music together and this has led on to ‘Night Thoughts’ and hopefully I’d like to think we could make another record after ‘Night Thoughts’. It feels very exciting being in Suede at the moment, it feels like we have a renaissance happening, creatively.

A detailed analysis of some of the lyrics (click here)

Brett Anderson talking more about his songwriting

Looking at the murky corners of life, for me, has always been where I’ve got it right as a songwriter, documenting the darker and more twisted things in life. There’s always friction, you can always find friction in any relationship and for me it’s about documenting those elements of friction. A lot of it is about decay and ageing but also parenthood as well, becoming a father and your relationship with your kids and how that mirrors your own relationship with your parents. Having a child myself made me think about my role as a son. Songs like ‘I Don’t Know How To Reach You’ are almost a comment on my and my own father’s relationship, how these relationships break down. Inevitably there’s an element of looking back at the past.

Goes against the effect of digitisation which sees audiences not listening to albums in full put streaming out of order.

Quite sexually graphic at points:

So give me head, give me head, give me head music. 

In this live performance, Brett sings the line "Shaking their bits to the hits"
as "Shaking their t**s to the hits*

Issue with school setting, will be censored. Need to find the closest compromise. 

GENRE RESEARCH #5 - Difference between alternative and indie

Institutions and Audiences Book

Mainstream, Independent and Alternative. You can be independent put still target your media products/texts to a mainstream/commercial audience.

From this article:

...is there actually any validity to a separation between the two? Well, yes and no.
Alternative and indie, at their roots, stand more for vague ideas and beliefs than any kind of specific musical styles of sounds, and truly the only real difference is the location of the artist: alternative was the preferred nomenclature of American artists while indie came straight from the British Isles.

 BRITISH INDIE

Yes, indie is at heart the English expression. In the U.K., indie started out simply as the trade term for records released on independent record labels. In the wake of punkrock in the late 1970s, the do-it-yourself ethos had flowered in England. With labels like Rough Trade, Factory, Mute and Cherry Red all growing in stature, the UK Indie Chart began chronicling the best-selling independently-released singles in 1980.
Yet at some point, the simple classification changed. Many point to the iconic cassette compilation "C86," which was given away with an edition of the English weekly "NME" in 1986. The "album" sought to chronicle a burgeoning English guitar-pop underground called either "cutie" or "shambling" at the time. As these descriptive names suggest, these bands played a twee, amateurish form of home-made music drawing deeply from sunny '60s acts like The Byrds and the Velvet Underground.
Rough Trade recording artists The Smiths were the biggest band in the U.K. at that time. Known as a proudly indie band whose obvious debt to The Byrds contrasted their frontman Morrissey's Oscar Wilde rakish wit, The Smiths unsurprisingly released "C86" to great critical acclaim.
Featuring bands like The Pastels, The Shop Assistants, and Primal Scream, C86became a huge hit, then a buzz-word, then a catch-all.
Sometime thereafter, indie meant being synonymous with this particular style, this particular cassette. Stylistically, this meant a retro-phonic, largely sexless form of music with jangly guitars and the vague taint of nostalgia. Indie no longer referred to the factual realities of record distribution. Indie was somewhere between a state of mind and a singular guitar tone. 

After a quarter-century of sexually-frustrated, bookish boys and block-fringed girls playing proudly indie music labels, you'd think it would've made indie a definable style, if not a singular sound. Yet, as I originally said, this depends on which side of the pond you're on. 

In America, indie often means twee, meek, Anglophilic; and it always means retrophonic. To be indie is to do so without distortion, without aggression. And, given the state of modern American radio, this almost by nature makes indie acts underground bands. In fact, aside from The Shins, I can't think of anyone with a true indie-pop sound who's made a run on the American charts.

Yet, back in England — birthplace of the word — "indie" has come to mean something else entirely. No longer a term used, often proudly, to describe bands with a down-to-earth attitude and do-it-yourself beliefs, indie has come to be shorthand for the direst form of non-rock.
In Britain, these days indie is routinely used as a catch-all to describe an ever-growing succession of impossibly bland, laddish bands playing inoffensive, melancholy ballad-rock. Their kings are Coldplay and Snow Patrol, two outfits of indistinct, fresh-faced fellows who've made a mint by playing soft, jangly songs free from tension and edge and polished up to a modern-FM-radio sheen. But Coldplay and Snow Patrol are the ones you know, the ones who made it outside the British Isles. If you've heard of The Fratellis, The Kooks or Razorlight, you likely live in the United Kingdom. 

applied to Suede:

In a 1995, base player Mat Osman said:

We're just a pop band really. We're not kinda like a cult band, or an alternative band or anything, we just make sort of pop records, records that people like. Nothing very complicated.

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