Music Video Research

This collection of Kano videos share similar properties, particularly that the main artist is the main focus of the video, and appears in a large proportion of the shots, this conforms with Goodwin's Theory, which  states that the recording artist is in shot very often.

We thought that the styling of these videos worked very well, particularly that they seem to be have shot in 1 take - we would be interested in emulating this in our attempt at a music video, however this would need an extremely large amount of planning and it could potentially take hundreds of takes to get it right, particularly as the song we have chosen is quite a long track.

The clip above is from the movie 'Kidulthood' which has proven very popular among the youth of today, we selected this specific clip as we thought we could incorporate some of the shots used between 0:32-1:30 for example 

This Maverick Sabre video uses some of the features I spoke about in other videos in this playlist such as heavily featuring the artist.

This video, 'The Return of Mr. Pane' is sort of the style we are looking as it focuses heavily on the main artist, Mikill Pane.

Album Cover

Before my partner and I begin to design a digipak, as well as posters using Photoshop, I thought it would be a good idea to get to know the software. I have created some CD covers in spare time using a variety of the tools and features of the programs.

With this first cover, I had to use the magnetic lasso tool in order to highlight the artist - Tyler, the Creator - and delete the background; in order to make the edges look smoother I used the blur tool, so that the image would look like there was a transition between foreground and background instead of one image looking as if it has been pasted directly on to another. Next, I simply used text tool to create a text box in which I copy and pasted the group name 'OFWGKTA'; then I rotated this and changed the colour and font size. The way in which I made one OFWGKTA stand out was by creating a new text box in a new layer, making the font the same size and manually moved it over one of the background 'OFWGKTAs'. I then used the outer glow tool to give it a glow and after used the brush tool to add the effect of the word bleeding/melting.

After this effort, I decided that I would like to try out some of the filters that are available using Photoshop. I started out with this image: 

Again I needed to remove the background so I went through the same process of using the magnetic lasso tool to select the artist, and remove the background. As the artist sometimes goes by the name of 'Scorcher Skywalker' I thought that Skywalker would be a suitable as the album title. I used a futuristic font for the title, because Skywalker connotes Star Wars which has themes of space travel etc. so I thought it would be appropriate. I kept the artists name quite small as his image is very much the focus of the cover and people buying the album would generally know who the CD was by, immidiately after seeing his face. I decided to use a silhouette of the London Skyline as the background because Skyline has connotations with the 'sky' in Skywalker, but also because the artist is a London rapper so it shows a connection to his roots. Finally, I used filters to create this brush stroke effect on the image, as well as reducing the saturation of this layer to reduce the vibrancy of the colour of his jacket, as it contrasted too heavily against the black background and text.

Music Industry Research

Making Money
"The turmoil in the recorded music industry changed the twentieth-century balance between artists, record companies, promoters, retail music-stores and the consumer. As of 2010, big-box stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy sell more records than music-only stores, which have ceased to function as a player in the industry. Recording artists now rely on live performance and merchandise for the majority of their income, which in turn has made them more dependent on music promoters like Live Nation (which dominates tour promotion and owns a large number of music venues.) In order to benefit from all of an artist's income streams, record companies increasingly rely on the "360 deal", a new business-relationship pioneered by Robbie Williams and EMI in 2007. At the other extreme, record companies can offer a simple manufacturing and distribution deal, which gives a higher percentage to the artist, but does not cover the expense of marketing and promotion. Many newer artists no longer see a record deal as an integral part of their business plan at all. Inexpensive recording hardware and software made it possible to record reasonable quality music in a bedroom and distribute it over the internet to a worldwide audience. This, in turn, caused problems for recording studios, record producers and audio engineers: the Los Angeles Times reports that as many as half of the recording facilities in that city have failed. Changes in the music industry have given consumers access to a wider variety of music than ever before, at a price that gradually approaches zero. However, consumer spending on music-related software and hardware increased dramatically over the last decade, providing a valuable new income-stream for technology companies such as Apple Inc."


(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry)


Most of the money made by up and coming artist will be from live PAs and performances. Because of this the video will be posted online as there is little way of making any money back from producing the video. The release of the new single is in a bid to increase the hype surrounding F Star Raw, so that he can achieve more record sales. This single a CD will be released alongside a string of performances at major venues throughout the UK


Distribution
Music distribution is the essentially, the process music reaches the shops. Distributors usually make deals with the artists' record label but sometimes directly through the artist if they are independent. The distributors make money by taking a percentage of the revenue from each CD sold.


The distributors normally expect the 'finished article' from the label/ artist but sometimes they sign a M&D deal which is an agreement where the distributor manufactures and distributes the CDs/ albums. They retain all of the revenue until their initial investment has been paid off, then they will take a cut from the revenue after this point.


F Star Raw is an independent artist as has signed a distribution deal with a private distribution company. They have agreed a deal with HMV who will take 10,000 units 6000 of which will be spread between the London based stores and the remaining 4000 throughout the rest of their stores in the UK.




Royalties
Essentially royalties are an exclusive copyright to the score/lyrics of a song. Owning the royalties gives you 5 exclusive rights:
(a) to make copies of the songs through print or recordings
(b) to distribute them to the public for profit
(c) to the "public performance right"; live or through a recording
(d) to create a derivative work to include elements of the original music; and
(e) to "display" it (not very relevant in context).


These exclusivities have led to the evolution of distinct commercial terminology used in the music industry.
They take four forms:
(1) royalties from "print rights"
(2) mechanical royalties from the recording of composed music on CDs and tape
(3) performance royalties from the performance of the compositions/songs on stage or television through artists and bands, and
(4) synch (for synchronization) royalties from using or adapting the musical score in the movies, television advertisements, etc. and
With the advent of the internet, an additional set of royalties has come into play: the digital rights from simulcasting, webcasting, streaming, downloading, and online "on-demand service".


[www.wikipedia.org]