Thursday16th March set work

In your mentor pairs, research the following - you have 30 mins.
1 student looks at:  

Prezi - Case Study Prosumers & Mash Ups
Prezis - Case Study 1: Prosumer & Mash Ups 

Update the Case Study with supplementary research - how was this album released when it was a compilation of music?

How did it perform in the music/download/streaming charts (look at online distribution platforms for the numbers)

Student 2 looks at:
Beck Songreader
Beck Prezi

Update the Case Study with supplementary research - who is he signed to now? Is he still Mashing Up?

Look up Mash Ups (wiki, youtube, other websites) - what type of music and music events does this create an audience for (dance music festivals, youtube channels, is it now a genre in itself?)

How did this perform in the music/download/streaming charts (look at online distribution platforms for the numbers)
To demonstrate:
In your mentor pairs, (bacl together now) - create a popplet to apply the following words to this Case Study, and outline (sentences) how these Case Studies compare to your Case Study on Majors and Indie Labels:

1. Digital Technology & Production
2. Audience's participation/collaboration, creating relationship with the audience
3. Digital Technology & Distribution
4. Digital Technology & Exchange

You have 30 mins


Here is some help for the comparison
Beck vs Xfactor compare points & argue
Compare Beck & Xfactor Case Studies

Lesson Plan 1

Task: define the terms with examples
Digitechs effect - argumernts - Purity, Visualisation, Recycling
Paticipatory Culture


essay structure:
http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/lesson-52.html

Set work Period 1 Thursday 12th March

Use the links from last lesson 

Answer the questions

Present your case study with images as a Prezi

D Apply the terms to examples:

Digital Technology

Production

Distribution platform (like spotify)

Marketing

Exchange

Vertical integration

Mobile/portable devices

Horizontal integration

Streaming 

Subscription services 

Apps

Connecting/relationship with audience

Synergy

Convergence

Conglomerate

Long tail

C Use full scentences to give reasons and purpose to the impact of digital technology (apps, production tech, online music services)

B Compare and contrast majors and indies explaining

A argument - has digital music technology this been good for the music industry - refer to some arguments discussed on Monday

Purity vs recycling/electronic music

Devaluing music/disposable

Democratising music 

Audiences more involved in the process

Visualisation- Music is more about image

Previous Students Label Case Studies (for comparison)

Independent labels vs major labels from CammieSarah51

It is better to have your own independent record label than to be signed to a major. from whitneyjade

Independent Music Labels from becks84

4.3 Post Musicoploy Case Study in Digital Music

 

http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/brits-blatently-promoting-best-of.html

Complete the Mind Map on the board diagram of ipad/iphone

 

 Lesson Plan
http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/exam-content-post-musicopoly-case-study.html

4.3 Musicopoly - PDE

Where we have been...
The Brits is a promotional event for Major Record Labels.
The Big 3 - Warner, Sony, Universal - Conglomerate (A Media Industry than operates in different countries)
UK artists = UK audience
Taylor Swift - big UK audience, further promotion

Independent Labels not represented - a skewed picture of success - only Commerical value this year (2015)

Adele (2012-13) biggest global selling artist signed XL records (Indie UK)
Thermometer this year MAJOR LABELS ARE STILL COMMERICALLY SUCCESSFUL
Are they Critically Successful (ie 'good' music) - Mercury Music Awards/Journalism?

Starter: http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/starter-synergy.html

http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/majors-vs-indoes.html

New Info/Create Meaning
Categorise the following under P-D/M-E
http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Musicopoly

Research
Using your sheets, find examples of the individual aspects (ie web distributor) to map out an actual company

Play Musicolpoly

Define what these are - how can we apply this to V.I & H.I.
What are the benefits?
How has Digital/Online Music helped Indies & DIY artists compete?

Apply:
Find the evidence: Artic Monkeys, Radiohead, Adele

Exam Content: Post-Musicopoly Case Study 1 & 2

Contemporary Case Study 1 & 2: Major Labels vs Indie Labels
http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/use-your-case-studies-compare-contrast.html

Research Instructions:
http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/for-your-easter-break-case-study-on.html

Do this for both a Major Label & an Indie Label with your Mentor Partner. Apply the following concepts:

Convergence
Synergy
Production
Distribution/Marketing
Exchange
Vertical Integration
Horizontal Integration
Conglomerate/Subsidiary

Focus on a specific artists on your 2 labels & explore HOW they are using Digital Technology, Mobile Devices to create a relationship with target audiences, and their interactions. Back this up with evidence from Social Networks (Soundcloud, Twitter, FB, Myspace)

Major Label Artstist to select from:
Ed Sheeran
Royal Blood
Sam Smith
Madonna
Taylor Swift

This will model how X factor use it - but you will need your own contemporary Case Study
http://leighmediaasmusicind.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/homework-for-easter-case-study-for-exam.html

Trends of the Brits - class notes

What can you sugest to explain why this artist won?



How does it break the trends we found?

Brits - Resource 3 effect of promoting the 'best' of British Music to UK audiences

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31684779

Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran lead revamped album chart

Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour sold 38,000 copies, with streams equivalent to a further 2,900 sales

Continue reading the main story

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Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran and Royal Blood have taken the top spots in the first UK album chart to count streaming data alongside sales.

All three enjoyed a boost after winning Brit Awards earlier in the week.
Smith returned to number one after picking up best breakthrough artist and the global success award.
Sheeran - who won best British male and album - rose to number two, while Royal Blood climbed 15 places to number three after scooping best British group.
George Ezra, who performed at the Brits ceremony on Wednesday, climbed two places to four.
Best international female winner Taylor Swift rose three places to number five - despite having removed her music from Spotify last November, saying free streaming was devaluing music.
She is one of the few stars to resist the rise of streaming, which doubled in the UK in 2014 while CD sales dropped by 8%.

Ed Sheeran's X sold 35,000 copies and had a 'stream factor' of 3,400

The Official Charts Company has now devised a formula to add streams from services like Spotify, Deezer and Google Play to figures from the sales of downloads, CDs and vinyl.
The formula looks at how many times the tracks on each album have been played.
The figures for the two most popular songs are then reduced to prevent huge hit singles distorting the album chart. If an album has more than 12 songs, just the most popular 12 are counted.
The adjusted total number of streams for the songs on each album is then divided by 1,000, and that figure is added to the physical and digital sales.
Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour sold 38,000 copies in the past week and its streaming figure was 2,900.
Ed Sheeran's X sold 35,000 copies and had a "stream factor" of 3,400.

Paloma Faith's Brit Award and performance helped her to number eight

"Sam and Ed are both established as genuine superstars now - and the fact that they appeal to fans who buy CDs, snap up album downloads and stream music highlights just how broad their appeal is," Official Charts Company chief executive Martin Talbot said.
Streaming was incorporated into the singles chart last July.
Elsewhere on the chart, the 40th anniversary reissue of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti took it to number six, while Chris Brown and Tyga entered at number seven with Fan of a Fan: The Album.
Paloma Faith's A Perfect Contradiction rose from number 33 to eight following her victory in the best British female category at the Brit Awards.
The track Madonna performed at the Brits, Living For Love, entered the singles chart at number 26.
This week's top five singles are unchanged, with Ellie Goulding spending a fourth week at the top, followed by Hozier; Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars; The Weeknd; and the collaboration between Sir Paul McCartney, Rihanna and Kanye West.

UK album chart top 10
Source: Official Charts Company
1	Sam Smith	In the Lonely Hour
2	Ed Sheeran	X
3	Royal Blood	Royal Blood
4	George Ezra	Wanted On Voyage
5	Taylor Swift	1989
6	Led Zeppelin	Physical Graffiti
7	Chris Brown & Tyga	Fan of a Fan: The Album
8	Paloma Faith	A Perfect Contradiction
9	Gregory Porter	Liquid Spirit
10	Hozier	Hozier

Brit Awards - Resource 2: Promotion & Labels?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/brit-awards/11433861/The-Brit-Awards-are-not-fit-for-purpose.html

The Brit Awards? More like the Twit Awards

A mainstream British music award that recognises The Spice Girls and Steps but overlooks The Rolling Stones, Radiohead and Led Zeppelin is not fit for purpose, says Neil McCormick

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The Spice Girls have won a Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music Photo: Paul Grover

By Neil McCormick

10:03AM GMT 25 Feb 2015

61 Comments

What do The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Clash have in common? They are among the superstars of British pop culture never to have received a Brit Award. And they are not exactly alone in being overlooked. How about Ray Davies and The Kinks, Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music or Morrissey and The Smiths? Not a gong between them.

Brit Awards 2015 live coverage

Considering this is a mainstream popularity award that was inaugurated in 1977 (as the Britannia Awards), has been running annually since 1982 (as the BPI awards), and since 1989 as the Brits, it has somehow managed to bypass many of the biggest talents, most significant artists and globally venerated stars of British pop history. So extraordinary is the roster of those not honoured by the Brits, you have to seriously question who the awards are supposed to be for?

"A Brit Award generally goes to a lot of shrivelled young souls who have not earned it," Morrissey opined in a recent diatribe against the British music industry’s annual backslapping celebration of itself. "None are likely to ask 'are you sure I deserve it?', possibly because they know the reply." For Morrissey, the Brits are just "the junk propaganda of the strongest labels gathering to share out awards for their own artists whom they plan to heavily promote." In other words, like all the Oscar and Bafta nominated films held back from the general public for release in award season, while being heavily promoted to judging academies, it is effectively a rigged contest operating as a future marketing campaign for industry favourites.

Actually I think Morrissey is wrong. I think the Brits is not so much inherently corrupt as completely dysfunctional. An academy voting system (which is what the Brits operates) has an inbuilt tendency to flatten things out, with a bias towards the most popular act of the moment, no possibility of discussion or debate, no way of correcting faults or distinguishing novelty acts from original and sustained talent. It is an awards system without critical bias, relying instead on collective recognition.

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Sometimes worthwhile artists win, reflecting those cherished moments when popular taste and artistic value converge. And sometimes you are confronted by such outrageous anomalies as manufactured boy-girl band Steps receiving a Brit in 2000 for (wait for it) Best Live Act. The Darkness, Duffy and Stereo MCs are all multiple award winners for flash in the pan pop moments. The Brits has bestowed honours upon such negligible talents as S Club 7, Busted, Five, Des’Ree, Sonique, Kula Shaker and James Morrison. Meanwhile consistently interesting, critically acclaimed and globally recognised artists of the calibre of Elvis Costello, PJ Harvey and Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders have been ignored for year after year, along with such culturally significant groups as Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Pulp, Madness and The Sex Pistols. You could make a truly extraordinary festival of British pop from the Brits cast-offs.
Many British superstars enjoyed their glory days before the Brits were properly established. However The Beatles, who broke up in 1970, have been honoured collectively and individually multiple times, whilst The Stones (who kept rocking all the way through) have been entirely disregarded. The Outstanding Contribution to Music Award was presumably supposed to correct such incongruities. Among its recipients have been The Spice Girls and Robbie Williams, which might explain why the category has been quietly dropped in recent years. The Spice Girls may have made an outstanding contribution to something, but I can tell you for sure it wasn’t music.

If the Brit awards are really that hit and miss, perhaps it is time for us all to give it a miss. Because this level of persistent omission goes well beyond accidental oversight and suggests a problem that is systemic. A mainstream British music award that runs for over thirty years and can’t find a place for Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Ray Davies, Bryan Ferry, Thom Yorke or Morrissey is not fit for purpose. Maybe we should think of another name for the whole farrago. How about the Twits?

The Brits & Distribution - Resource 1

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-media-column-the-brit-awards-reflect-the-state-of-a-music-industry-in-flux-10062960.html

The Media Column: The Brit awards reflect the state of a music industry in flux

If there is a “conspiracy” to keep rock music out of this week’s Brit awards – a theory advanced by the overlooked band Kasabian – then it has certainly bypassed the executive charged with overseeing this year’s UK record industry showcase event.

“The Brits are the most democratic of all the awards,” argues Max Lousada, the chairman and CEO of Warner Music, who chairs the Brits committee and thus has responsibility for the creative direction of an event that prompts a feverish debate each year about the health of British pop and rock.
“There is an academy of more than 1,000 voters and only 20 per cent of those votes are from labels. If artists, managers, studio engineers aren’t voting for a certain band, it’s not a reflection of one genre, it’s a reflection of taste,” he said, adding that Kasabian, who topped the charts and headlined Glastonbury last year, have previously enjoyed nine nominations.
Wednesday night’s extravaganza at the O2 Centre will celebrate the multimillion selling achievements of Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith, Grammy-winning solo artists who have enjoyed global success, along with breakthrough acts such as George Ezra, Clean Bandit and Royal Blood, who hope to follow in their footsteps.
But the show takes place against the backdrop of a recorded music industry that fell another 1.6 per cent in value last year. Although streaming services are delivering major returns for hitmakers such as Sheeran, Warner’s golden boy, and Mark Ronson, they have yet to make good the lost revenue from the stark decline in iTunes downloads and CD sales.
The solution, perhaps an unusually honest one from a record executive, is to make better music. Lousada, 41, who began his career importing cutting-edge club records for DJs before heading up the New York hip-hop label Rawkus Records, said: “There have been a lot of records where fans felt they had been let down. Previously, you had to buy a record; now they can hear the music in advance and make a choice. The consumer has a shorter attention span and a fascination with the ‘new’, which doesn’t necessarily help sitting quietly in a room for 45 minutes listening to an album. People will experiment with the length of an album because time has sped up. How do you maintain loyalty with an audience which has no memory of a purchase relationship?”
Warner Music is beginning to solve the conundrum – total revenue rose 1.7 per cent, to $829m (£540m), during the last quarter, boosted by Sheeran’s X, the biggest seller of 2014. Physical sales actually rose by $20m, with a new Pink Floyd album finding an older audience of vinyl and CD buyers.
Yet, with no weekly mainstream music show on television since the demise of Top of the Pops, a performance slot on the Brits is highly prized by artists hoping to engage a wider, digitally distracted, audience. Artists – or labels – do have to pay to play.
“There are conversations between labels as to who is available to go on the show and who is willing to pay for an artist to go on because these are expensive productions to stage,” said the Brits chairman, who has secured an appearance by Taylor Swift.
“The big winners from the Brits previously have been the artists that have had less exposure. Royal Blood [the Warner-signed Brighton garage rock duo] will really see the benefit of performing alongside Madonna, Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran.” Lousada, who helped develop the careers of Muse, Plan B and Paolo Nutini, has brought in Es Devlin, the Olympics closing ceremony set designer, to bring a sharper “minimalist aesthetic” to the stage performances.
“It’s great Ed is going to give an exclusive performance of a new song,” he revealed. “You want unique moments and performances that haven’t been seen on mainstream television before.”
The Brits used to be synonymous with chaos but in recent years it has been criticised for becoming too slick. Ant and Dec, who take over hosting duties from James Corden, have been told they can abandon the autocue. Lousada said: “James did an amazing job, but I want it to feel live and spontaneous, otherwise it can become overly scripted.” The model is Stephen Fry. “He was amazing at the Baftas. His ability to engage and be comfortable and humorous is, I think, important for a live show.”
There will even be a front-row table seat for Noel Gallagher, who accused the Brits of being “rigged” and said he despaired of a world in which Sheeran could sell out three summer nights at Wembley stadium.
Warner’s role in elevating Sheeran from pub strummer to globe-straddling star was to “build a platform to allow him to perform great songs. Ed already had a determined vision about how he saw his career evolving. He’s a prolific songwriter and wordsmith”. Lousada’s job is often to tell stars which of the multitude of opportunities to reject, in order to avoid overexposure.
He does have sympathy with Gallagher’s plea for more politicised, working-class voices. “There’s generally a political apathy among young kids which is represented in music. Arguably, the last proper protest song was “Ill Manors” by Plan B (the Warner-signed rapper’s blistering assault on the Coalition after the riots), which came out of this building. Certain artists are starting to experiment but they are not necessarily doing it like The Clash did.”
Lousada, who secured a hotly tipped Rae Morris after tracking her down in a Blackpool fish ’n’ chip shop, points out that the heartfelt emotion of Adele or Sam Smith’s break-up songs are no less sincere than a political tirade.
Lucky indeed is the record company boss who finds The Magic Whip, the first new Blur album in 12 years, falling into his lap in Brits week, following Warner’s absorption of the famous Parlophone label. “It’s got that spirit of invention, energy, wit and sheer quality that sets them apart,” Lousada enthused. “Bands who can genuinely sustain a sense of excitement and evolution over 20-odd years don’t come around often.”