RESEARCH: Magazine advert's

1. Look at the magazine adverts produced by pervious A2 students on their blogs. Which do you find most like real magazine adverts? 

I believed this one to look really legitimate as the people who created it have included all the appropriate conventions in which allows it to look relatively professional. The fade out of dark at the bottom of the advert to the light could connote coming out of danger or rising from a dark place, the bold red writing further connotes to some form of danger.

With the use of the parental advisory sticker and the use of the fade and faded writing makes it appear edgier , the legitimacy is exentuated by the streaming options.

2. Research and collect adverts for newly released albums in a number of music magazines.

I could not find any up to date magazine adverts, due to the fact that most celebrities don't use famous music magazines as a means to promote their new and upcoming albums as it is not a piece of media that many people would choose to buy or even read anymore unless particularly interested in doing so. As a result I found the following adverts from artists from  the last few years which has helped to promote their newly released albums. 

High street retailers

I went into a few high street retailers and what was evident was that Music Magazines were not as popular and there was little to none stocked in most shops that I entered. The ones I did see were mainstream ones such as rolling stones.

Target audiences:

 Different genres of music will target their audiences differently as each target audience will be different and will vary in interests ect.

E.G. One Direction will have a predominantly fan base of young/teenage females , therefore their marketing campaigns and album covers may include things that that specific group would be interested in.

But in Regards to genre they may portray themselves in a certain way, E.G. a rock band may have dark colours and heavy images in order to convey what genre of music they produce.

RESEARCH: magazine advert

Magazine Advert For Digipak

On this magazine advert, the image of the artist dominates the page as it takes up two thirds of the advert. The makeup on the artist and the dominant colour on the advert is black with the gold accents in places shows Jessie J to be an extrovert and implies that her album will be reckless and different. 

She is also staring directly at the reader which captivates and grabs the attention of the audience. The test uses colours that are in strong contrast to the abundant black (white and gold). This makes the title of the album and the artist's name stand out as well as show off her love for jewellery and "bling".

The alignment of the text is centred to make it the centre of our attention, just like Jessie J.

RESEARCH: MAGAZINE ADVERT

1.) Look at the magazine adverts produced by previous A2 students on their blogs. Which do you find most like real magazine adverts? 

I think this one looked very real. This is because it had all the relevant conventions included. It included, the title of the album, in a red print. The red connotes to danger, passion and sometimes love, the faded effect on the text gave made it fresh and edgy. It also included the name of the artist as well as critical ratings. Another convention included is the "google play" and "iTunes" playing options.

2.) Research and collect adverts for newly released albums in a number of Music Magazines.

Target audience: 

I think all music adverts are represented in different ways. However I think pop genre music include more colour and eye capturing features. For example the Jessie J one has Jessie J written in huge gold writing, making  the name recognisable. Similarly, Little Mix which is on my previous blogpost, used a puprle/pink colour scheme to target their audience of mainly girls. 

We analysed this one in class;

REASERCH: Magazine Advert

Previous A2 adverts:

This magazine advert looks relatively professional. It has most conventions necessary to make it a successful magazine advert such as reviews, release date, parental advisory, online retailers and even social media pages. The colours also work well together, the grey fade into white looks well polishes and allows the pink/ red title to stand out.



Newly released albums in magazine adverts:

There were not a huge amount of magazine album adverts online; especially not many newly released ones, however below are some that I gathered.

High street Retailers:

I went into a few high street retailers and it was soon made clear that there were very few music magazines available and once big named magazines like Mojo and NME were no where to be seen. Despite this one shop that I entered had a Rolling Stones issue on display despite it being almost hidden on the top shelf. 
Below is an example of a rolling stones magazine.

Genres and Target Audiences:

Different artist will target their audiences differently depending on their dominant music genre. 

For example an artists who's music fits a rock genre may use dark colours and perhaps try and get a controversial message across; such as the Gorillaz who often portray political messages in their music which reflects in their advertising.

In comparison to this a pop artist may use bright colours, modern clothing and even social media to attract their sightly younger teenage fan base.


Two Analysed magazine adverts:

What I learnt:

From doing this research I learnt what professional magazine adverts are supposed to look like and the conventions and key features of them. This research also allowed me to look into what previous years had done as well as their step by step production stage, giving me an insight into the digital media technology used such as Adobe Photoshop.

RESEARCH: Semiotic analysis of digipak

What is a digipak?

A digipak offers the audience a lot more content than a disk with a regular cd cover. It is used as a marketing tool to provide an incentive for purchasing a hard copy from a high street or online rather than the seemingly more popular avenue of downloading/ streaming the music. It is now essential as sales of albums have dwindled as buyers now prefer to download their favorite track or tracks rather than having to pay out for a full album.

 They usually have a gate fold , similarly to a book and are often made of paper or card and inside plastic. especially used for special editions and albums, and became popular in the early 2000's with artists and record labels.

The incentive to buy is the added extras to the cd/dvd , as well as the actual disk and its case with front and back covers.

Including:

•  front
• back spine
• at least four additional panels.

The Additional panels include:

• Membership postcard/flier
• lyric section
• disk impression
• Band information section and booklet
• free image , poster and set of postcards

Elements of Digipaks:

Front Cover:

• name of the album
• name of the artist
• an image (often related to the name of the album)

Spine:

• album name
• artist name

                                                                                                                                                                  

        Back cover:

• list of songs
• name of the record label
• barcode
• distribution

                              

Internal panel

• booklet
• name of band
• name of band members
• instruments played
• list of the featured songs

Booklets:

• information on the artist
• lyrics
• pictures
• insider information on the song

Retailers:

Retailers such as HMV are renound for selling Dvd's, CD'S and Digipak's and their primary basis being offering such products. However in such a digital age it is quite surprising that such a store is  still up and running. its not without struggle, due to big contending music apps such as iTunes, Spotify and apple music. 



In 2012, HMV had to close down 40 stores in a bid to save millions in cost, with 15 shut in the first half of the year.

These include Woolworths, once the nation’s biggest seller of DVDs, Zavvi (formerly Virgin Music),

All of these were trapped by the squeeze on household incomes (the biggest since the 1920s) and by the advance of technology and competition from supermarkets and internet giants.

As for the march of technology, too many managements of retail businesses were slow to recognise the threat of online sales and of MP3 players and iPads.

But a more sinister factor has also been in play. Digital giants Google and Amazon were initially welcomed by the Government .Yet by allowing consumers access to pirate download sites at no cost, Google has essentially deprived musicians and recording studios of their intellectual property rights

Digital music revenues have surpassed the takings from traditional music formats , Worldwide, digital revenues ; from  subscriptions, downloads, and advertising revenue on sites such as YouTube – accounted for 45% of the total in 2015, compared with 39% for physical formats such as CDs and vinyl records.

The popularity of streaming, which has altered the way many people listen to music. The subscription value of streaming services like Spotify reached $68m (£47.7m) last year, a growth of 66% from 2014.

The problem is exacerbated by free websites like YouTube , which paid an estimated 70p per user to music rights holders in 2015.

Digipak nets:

RESEARCH: semiotic analysis of digipak

1. Research: Digipak Nets



The two main digipak nets used today are the 6 sided digipaks and the 4 sided digipaks, however out of the two, the 6 sided digipak has more advantages than the 4 sided one. Firstly, the designer is able to include much more information. Using 4 sided digipaks also has its benefits as they are straight to the point and much cheaper to produce, so if you have a low budget, then this is the ideal net for you.

2. Retailers: High street and Online

In today's society, the most common and cheapest way to purchase and listen to music is online via streaming websites and apps such as iTunes and Spotify.

It is less common to buy music  in the high street nowadays as people are gravitating towards online streaming. This caused well known music exhibitors to close down in areas, for example, in Hounslow High Street, the well known store HMV closed down as not many people were shopping there.

However, regardless of the viral hype, Vinyls are becoming increasingly popular again as a retro trend has become popular again.

3. Elements of Digipaks

 

A digipak offers the audience a lot more in terms of content than a disk with a regular CD cover. It is a marketing tool intended to offer the buyer an incentive for purchasing the hard copy from a high street or online retailer rather than downloading /streaming the music.

Textual Analysis:

Front Cover - generically include the title of the of the album, and the name of the artist. They usually also include a picture of the artist/band or artwork. In this example, Chris Brown has a picture of himself on the cover as well as his name and the album title "Fortune".

Back Cover & Spine - On the spine, you would  usually find the artist's name (J Cole), the title of the album (Cole World: The Sideline Story) and the record label which released the album (Roc Nation Columbia). The back cover of a digipak usually shows the tracks on the album, the album & artist's name and artwork along with institutional information. In this case, we have a picture of J Cole and the tracks on his album. At the bottom the are some institutional information such as the record label and distributors.





Internal Panel & Booklets - The internal panel has a place where the cd is kept and artwork to decorate the case. The booklet contains the track  list, credits (which go into depth about each song) and sometimes a lyric book for each track.



Research: Semiotic Analysis of DigiPak

Research: Digipak Nets



The two main digipak nets used today are the 6 sided digipaks and the 4 sided digipaks, however out of the two, the 6 sided digipak has more advantages than the 4 sided one. Firstly, the designer is able to include much more information. Using 4 sided digipaks also has its benefits as they are straight to the point and much cheaper to produce, so if you have a low budget, then this is the ideal net for you.



Other Net Designs:

What is a digipak?

A digipak is a marketing tool intended to offer the buyer an incentive for purchasing the hard copy from a high street or online retailer rather than downloading/streaming the music.

From my research I have discovered:

Front cover, includes:

Name of the album
Name of the artist, usually in bigger font than the album name, making the artist's name recognisable.
One main image - either of artist, or related to artist/name of the album

Spine:

Name of artist
Name of album
Abbreviated institutional information

Backcover:

Numbered tracks
Copyrights
Record Label
Barcode


Internal Panels:
Includes space for disc


Bookelts/Postcards/posters:
Images of artist
Individual information on each track e.g., recording information/ who wrote it

DIGIPAK ANALYSIS:

Retailers:

It can be inferred with online streaming, Apple Music and Spotify, people going out to buy CDS is becoming less and less common, however this is not the case!

- Infact, digital sales only eclipsed CDs for the first time in 2014. During that year, global sales of physical music (most of which are CDs) totaled $6.82 billion, which was down about 8 percent from the year before. 

- Billboard reported in July of 2015 that in the first half of the year, CD sales were in fact down from the last half of 2014, but still totaled 56.6 million units.




HMV:


HMV is one of the most renowned CD/DVD shops in the UK. HMV turned over £325m in the year to 2 January compared with £366m in 2015, a figure that was bolstered by the inclusion of an extra week’s trading. Despite the decline, HMV chair, Paul McGowan, described the figures as “encouraging”, pointing to market-share gains made in physical music and film sales. This made headlines such as "Retailer remains positive despite £41m drop in sales, pointing out 53-week sales period in 2015 and move to reduce video game shelf space" and "HMV sales fall as decline in physical media continues", stating that Brits have moved towards digital media alternatives.