Textual Analysis 11 - Varien 'The Ancient and Arcane' CD Cover

Consuming Habits of the Dance Music Industry

The consuming habits of the dance music scene are different to that of the mainstream scene. The dance scene is often seen as the most digitalised scene with artists releasing singles of extended plays (EP) through digital marketplaces only. Some artists will release long plays (LP), these albums are normally sold physically on the record labels website as well as through the digital marketplaces.

 

The dance music scene is record label orientated and releases are hyped up before the release of the song in order to gain a wider audience. They often do this by posting previews on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In addition, the song will be previewed on Soundcloud; a website designed for music sharing and is most prominent for the dance music scene.

 

Most people consume dance music through the releases and purchasing on digital marketplaces. Beatport is the most prominent marketplace where record labels such as Spinnin’ Records and Bourne Recordings will release on Beatport exclusively before a release on another digital marketplace like iTunes and Amazon. In addition to this, the consuming habits of some dance music audiences has shifted to music piracy as people now begin to download the music illegally.

 

From this research we gathered, we have discovered that in order to reach a wider audience, it will be useful to sign the song onto a record label. In addition to this, we would release previews and hype the release up on our social media pages, website and on our Soundcloud page. In addition, we should offer a physical copy for purchase on our website.

Goodwin's and Halls theory

Goodwin's theory is about genre conventions and their stereotypical characteristics. It looks at 7 different principles:

• Links between lyrics and visuals
• Genre characteristics
• Intertextual references
• Notions of looking; similar to the Male Gaze theory
• Voyeurism; the enjoyment of watching/ looking at the artist
• Demands of the record label
• Performance, narrative or concept based music videos.

When looking at the house genre of music videos and the music video for our song, Madeon 'Finale', there of differing styles that the music video takes. In 'Finale', there a focus on the artist and a narrative of him performing at a live show. While there of shots of the artist, very few are clear; ruling out the belief that the audience watches the music video to look at the artist. The lyrics and visuals don't often match, but the use of 'go out young' with the audience appearing to be of that age group shows that is it not out of the question.

Other music videos of the genre also tend to use a performance/narrative with some intertexual references for their niche audience. There may be some links with visuals but will often depend on the lyrics and if it possible to make any graphic matches.


Hall's reception theory is how the audience view the music video and it's messages. There are three readings that the audience may have to a music video:

• Dominant - the viewer accepts the points made in the video.
• Negociated - the viewer partly accepts the points but may question elements of the video.
• Oppositional - the viewer totally rejects the points made in the video.

The music video for Madeon's 'Finale' has very few controversial points, and is mainly about how the artist feels during a performance. Therefore, it is most likely people will have the dominant view of the video.


Few music videos of this genre raise controversial points due to already appealing to a niche audience. If so, they would be points the fan-base of the artist would also agree with.

Filming Day 1 - 10/1/16

Our first filming day went well. We now have a starting point and some shots that we can use to try and design a CD cover and website. Here are some of the shots we took.

Storyboard for Main Task

Updated pitch

We have updated our one page pitch to make it look more professional. We have also included our company logo to help show this.

Contributor Release Forms

In order to film our music video, we had to sign the release form in order to ensure all the credit for creating the music video. My form, Matt's form and Max's form are all available on Google Drive. The terms of our release forms are:

Texual Analysis 10 - Mashd N Kutcher Website

Textual Analysis: Mashd N Kutcher Website from Max Biddlecombe

Artwork Album Practice - The Prodigy

As a way to learn how to create a successful CD cover, we practiced by recreating a cover for the Prodigy's 'The Day is my Enemy'. The original cover, below, is a simple design of a fox with a bright background.

 

We used Photoshop to blur the image of the new animal and different colours with glossing and background removing to restyle the image. These techniques will be useful with our own ancillary tasks as we plan to use bright colours and adapted images in our own CD cover. We also learned that most digital covers are 1200x1200 to support digital retailers such as Amazon and iTunes.