MS3/MS4 - Genre Theory

Genre Theory

Do genres in the cinema really exist and if so, can they be defined?

“Genres isn’t a word that pops up in every conversation about films or every review – but the idea is second nature to the movies and our awareness of them. Movies belong to genres much the way people belong to families or ethnic groups. Name one of the classic, bedrock genres – Western, comedy, musical, war film, gangster picture, science fiction, horror – and even the most casual moviegoer will come up with a mental image of it, partly visual, partly conceptual” (Richard T. Jameson, They Went Thataway, 1994, p. IX).

“The master image for genre criticism is the triangle composed of artist/film/audience. Genres may be defined as patterns/form/styles/structures which transcend individual films, and which supervise both their construction by the filmmaker, and their reading by an audience” (Tom Ryall, quoted by Stephen Neale, Genre, 1980, p. 7).

“…genre can be defined as a structural pattern which embodies a universal life pattern or myth in the materials of language… Genre is universal, basic to human perceptions of life” (John Cawelti, The Six-gun Mystique, 1975, p. 30).

As Barry Keith Grant writes in the introduction of his genre reader, “the work of defining film genres is surprisingly difficult and complex’” [1] because “…recognition of the importance of genre in the cinema is a relatively recent development….although chronologically it narrowly predates the early work of auteur criticism.” [2] Grant takes notice that until the late 1940s and early 1950s – when Robert Warshow and genre pioneer André Bazin wrote the first significant essays on film genre (about gangster movies and about the Western) – films were only distinguished by a phrase (for example, ‘a war movie’) “used as a convenient label to give one an idea of what the story was like, what to expect generally from a film.” [3] As before in literature, in painting and in other forms of art, “genre became a critical term, providing another conceptual framework for understanding movies.” [4] A genre classification can also double as a precise commercial study because it evokes certain audience expectations and therefore it allows one to establish classifications, comparisons, balance-sheets, valuations for the future and so on. Although it has been helpful for cinema studies, classifying films in accordance with their genre remains a difficult and risky endeavor because genre ‘impurity’ is by now, some twenty years after the solidification of genre study, a constant characteristic and a usual practice of the cinema as art and as industry.

Extract from: Offscreen.com

How Much Does A Band Earn From Each Music Platform? Uniform Notion Shares The Numbers

How Much Does A Band Earn From Each Music Platform? Uniform Notion Shares The Numbers

Like most indie and d.i.y. artists, Uniform Motion relies primarily on digital sales and streaming to earn income from their recorded music.  Without the benefit of profits from brick and mortar retail, as Uniform Motion released a new recording, they decided to research and share with their fans what each source of income was going to pay them. While its an unofficial snapshot of what one EU based band is earning, it provides a valuable primer for any artist or label:

1 EUR = 1.36 USD

SPOTIFY: 

• With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play. 
• If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.
• If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we’ll get 0.29 EUR
• If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EUR
• If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!
• If you use the free version of Spotify, it won’t cost you anything. Spotify will make money from ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money. They only disclose this information to the Major record labels…

DEEZER: (A Spotify like service in UK and France)

• Deezer seems to pay a little more.
• We’ve been getting 0.006 EUR/play from them. That’s 0.052 EUR/album play. If you listen to the album 10 times on Deezer, we’ll get 0.52 EUR. If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 5.2 EUR. If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get a whopping 52 EUR! 
• If you use the free version of Deezer, it won’t cost you anything and Deezer will make money from the ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money either.

eMUSIC:

• eMusic is a subscription service. The cost of the album will depend on the plan you have. We get roughly $0.29/song or $2.60/album (9 songs). 

AMAZON MP3:

• You’ll pay 7.11 EUR to download the MP3’s. We will get 4.97 EUR of that. That’s a 70-30 split.

iTUNES:

• The album will cost you 8.91 EUR to buy from Apple.
• There’s a 70-30% split there too, so we will keep 6.28 EUR/album.
• That being said, it costs us 35 EUR/year to keep an album on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon (105 EUR per year for all 3 of our albums!) so we don’t make any money until 24 people have bought a digital copy of the album on iTunes, or 150 single songs, or if we get tens of thousands of listens on Spotify! In most cases, it’s actually more economically viable not to sell the music at all.

But what about if you buy the Digital version directly from us?

DIGITAL:

• We allow people to pay what they want for the digital version. If you choose to pay 5 EUR, Paypal takes 0.37 EUR, Bandcamp takes 0.75 EUR. Uniform Motion keeps 3.88 EUR. it doesn’t cost us anything to have a page on bandcamp.
• If you decide to pay nothing, well, we get nothing, but at least you didn’t give money indirectly to major record labels, which seems to be the case with Spotify!!

CD: 

• If you buy a CD, directly from us for 10 EUR, Paypal takes 0.515 EUR, Bandcamp takes 1.5 EUR. So there’s slightly less than 8 EUR left for us. But hold on a second, it costs a fair bit to make the CD.
• The CD itself costs 1.2 EUR, the booklet costs about 50 cents, the CD packaging is 1.8 EUR and the sticker on the front costs 35 cents.
• That’s a total of 3.65 EUR
• So in reality, there’s 4.34 EUR left for us.

VINYL:

• If you buy a 12” Vinyl from us at 15 EUR, Bandcamp takes 2.25 EUR, Paypal takes 0.646 EUR so there’s 12.10 left. The cost of the Vinyl itself is 3.06 EUR
• The labels cost 1.3 EUR. For a total of 4.36 EUR
• So there’s 7.75 EUR left for us.
• However, we had to press 250 of these (because that’s the minimum order), so it’s very unlikely we’ll make any money on them.
• We need to sell 72 copies before we break even on the vinyl edition. We’ve sold about 30 so far.
• If we break even, we’ll lower the price a little bit. :)

via Techdirt

Radiohead: MS4 Music 'The King Of Limbs'

Very Good Sample Response A/B: Industry/Music

B4. Explore how your chosen texts use digital technology in their marketing.

My three texts for this section are Lady Gaga’s 2011 album ‘Born This Way’, Radiohead’s 2011 album ‘The King of Limbs' and Nirvana’s 1991 album ‘Nevermind’. Each of my artists took different approaches to marketing with and without the use of digital technology.

Gaga uses digital technology such as the internet to sell her albums as well as making a retail copy. Her 2011 album ‘Born This Way’ sold 440,000 copies within two days via download on the Amazon website for a price of only 99 cents. A consequence of this new digital system and method for obtaining music is that fans can illegally download/ leak the album before the intended release date. Oxford band ‘Radiohead’ found a way around this problem when self-releasing their 7th album ‘In Rainbows’ (2007).

Breaking free of major labels and embracing digital technology Radiohead set up a website where they released ‘In Rainbows’ allowing their fans/ everyone to pay what they wanted for a digital copy, which let the fans decide how much the music was worth to them. This proved highly profitable for the band themselves and set a new industry model whereby the artists gained more profit and more control.

Lady Gaga is also well known for using Twitter to communicate with her social networking, teenage fans on a regular basis, creating a parasocial relationship with them. Overall the singer/ songwriter has 41,482,584 followers on the social networking site as well as other followers on other sites such as Facebook and Google+. The connection she has with her fans via the use of social media allows her to cultivate and reinforce a personal relationship with her fans to preserve her popularity and mainstream pop status. Digital technology therefore allows wider access and increases potential sales in the modern digital market.

Gaga’s success and popularity increased as she became more globally known through the use of digital technology. She released 5 singles over an 8 month period all accompanied with a music video, which can be found on her own YouTube channel. Repeated views increase her market value and maintain a level of popularity. The high production values together with the glamorous and provocative appearance of Gaga herself also made her videos compulsive viewing for her fans (Little Monsters as she calls them) on YouTube. She gains millions of hits per video and this encourages countless fans to create viral copycat productions which have increased her online presence immensely.

A band who didn’t follow this modern, mainstream method of marketing was Radiohead, an indie/ alternative rock band from Oxford, UK. Their self-promotion and self-releases of albums ‘In Rainbows’ (2007) and ‘The King of Limbs’ (2011), via their website allowed the release(s) to occur globally and at the same time see an increase in sales due to their established fanbase, cultivated via their major label EMI. ‘The King of Limbs’ sold an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 copies through the website alone. The experiment they conducted with the release of album 7 ‘In Rainbows,’ limited the possibility of illegal recordings/ leaks being distributed allowing the band more control in their output. This unique form of marketing resulted in positive and negative press coverage as a result of bypassing and not conforming to the usual record industry models. For the band themselves it allows more freedom and more profit, they have stated that they earned more money from their self-released albums – something the industry have historically depended upon.

As the band already had an established fan base, they didn’t accompany their 2011 album ‘The King Of Limbs’ with a tour and only released a niche, low budget, DIY music video for one track ‘Lotus Flower’, solely targeting their pre-existing fan base. Both Gaga and Radiohead gained and have sustained their fan bases and promoted their work(s) through the use of digital technology.

A band that didn’t have access to digital marketing during their career were ‘grunge’/ rock three-piece Nirvana. For their 1991 album ‘Nevermind’ they were totally reliant upon marketing via their major record label Geffen. Coverage from music press such as ‘NME’ and ‘Rolling Stone’ magazines, helped promote the bands profile but ‘word of mouth’ was essential in spreading the message about the bands work pre-internet as well as TV appearances and live touring. Due to this it took the band 5 months to get to number 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, whereas both ‘The King of Limbs’ and ‘Born This Way’ went straight to the top of the charts in their first week proving the effective use of digital technology in the music industry in todays modern marketplace.

Digital technology was not available during these times but their popularity is now widely promoted via ITunes and other online sites such as Facebook as a form of nostalgia for both those that enjoyed their music at the time and new fans. The suicide of lead vocal Kurt Cobain and the rise in sales post-death poses the statement that ‘artists make more money/ get more recognition once they’re dead’. This can be proven due to release of albums such as ‘Nirvana’s Greatest Hits’ released via online stores for the 20th Anniversary of Cobain’s death, promoting their work further with the use of digital technology.

Digital technology is highly used in order to market and promote artists in the music industry today as it has an immediate impact on fans and allows fans to access and download their work(s) in high quality, reducing the costs of production and distribution for music labels. The use of digital technology also allows for new artists to become widely known through social networking sites.

'A' Grade Exam Response: Nirvana

How effectively were your three main texts marketed?

Nirvana had to rely upon upon their major record label Geffen to gain them mainstream popularity in the 1990's as the internet was in its infancy. Their 1991 release 'Nevermind' was released by Geffen at a time when to achieve widespread success in the music industry it was essential to be signed to a global label as they had the marketing and distribution capabilities to promote artists. At this time critical acclaim, through reviews, and 'word of mouth' enabled artists to become popular and established on the independent circuit, but this restricted worldwide success due to lack of revenue - this is why Nirvana chose to ditch their independent label Sub Pop and sign to the major label Geffen. 

Their use of a strong visual rebellious iconography; long-hair, ripped jeans and punk rock attitude had already created a hardcore audience which had allowed them to successfully market themselves to not only metal fans but also more alternative genres. This attitude can be clearly seen in the 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' music video. In the opening shot we instantly see the 'Converse All Star' baseball shoe a typical clothing signifier of teen rebellion. The videos mise-en-scene of a high school basketball court with teenagers 'moshing' in slow-motion was also highly evocative of Nirvana's cultural ideology and potential audience appeal.

Nirvana's DIY, punk attitude was already well-established from their time at Sub Pop, but maintaining this with the move to Geffen increased their marketing potential as they hadn't 'sold out' to their hardcore fans. On the UK promotional tour for 'Nevermind' Kurt Cobain, and the rest of the band, maintained their authentic attitude and image on several TV shows such as Jonathan Ross and Top Of The Pops. On the Jonathan Ross show in 1991 they were expected to play their new single 'In Bloom' but instead chose to play one of their heaviest metal genre songs 'Territorial Pissings'. This created  a buzz around them and people wanted to see them live and this also increased the sales of their album 'Nevermind'.  This would have been viewed as a highly effective marketing strategy in the early 90's before the progression to internet marketing as their popularity was increasing through reviews and 'word of mouth'. 

However, since the demise of Cobain and Nirvana the internet has now enabled their legacy to continue through iTunes and youtube and their music can still be marketed at a young rebellious audience. The ability to target audiences through iTunes with links to other artists has allowed marketing approaches to successfully reach appropriate audiences without the added costs of promotional and live touring. The internet has also allowed new audiences to discover Nirvana and buy their album 'Nevermind' as witnessed for the 20th Anniversary re-release via iTunes. This has now allowed the album to achieve over 26 million sales worldwide since its release in 1991.     

     

MS4 - Text, Industry & Audience: Television: Strengthening Exam Responses

Exam Responses: Guidance 

• Developing more thorough responses to exam questions is a key skill that needs to be developed in preparation for the exam. 
• Below are sample paragraphs of A and D grade responses to a Television/Audience question from a previous paper. 
• These highlight the contrasts in content, detail and discussion that is required to get the highest grade possible. 
• Strengthening your exam skills and technique to create better responses is not difficult if you can recognise your weaknesses and change your approach to answering questions from a more critical perspective rather than largely descriptive. 

(Section B)
Explore the different ways in which your chosen texts attract their audiences. 

'D' grade response

My second text is Mad Men, this show is aired on a cable channel AMC in America. So it is not as mainstream as programmes shown on BBC or ITV channels and therefore more niche in target audience. The target audience is males and females but may be tipped slightly more aimed at males but they didn't want to eliminate the female population, people in their late 20s to a much older generation due to the complex script involved. Mad Men is a long running narrative that invests in characters so will attract viewers that are less passive and will invest more time and thought into the series. There is a scene of promiscuity in the text I have looked at that shows the audience they want to attract is an adult audience and also implies that it is a male audience they are targeting the show at also. The series is set in the 1960s so will attract predominantly viewers that understand this decade, it uses many conventions like colour connotations and mise-en-scene to show the genre and era of this show.

Comments

Lacks detail - has a tendency to generalise - lacks confident use of audience terminology - does not relate a scene in the text to how an audience will be attracted

'A' grade response

The opening episode to Mad Men Season 4, see’s an extended conversation between Don Draper and an interviewer take place, something that a younger audience – 16-25 – may find unappealing. The younger audience would not find the topic of conversation about Ad agencies interesting or engaging as it fails to relate to their own interests, therefore it would provide no gratification and have no use for them as viewers or their peers. A younger audience would be more used to fast paced editing and simple narratives concerning gossip and relationships, such as TOWIE or Made In Chelsea, as they can personally identify with such issues or aspire to their ideals.  It is therefore clear that the target audience for Mad Men is a middle class male demographic. The highbrow nature of the show lends itself to a middle class audience, as it is often reviewed in newspapers like 'The Guardian’. 

Comments

Includes detail - does not generalise - uses appropriate audience theory/terminology - relates theory directly to the text - is confident

Strong Exam Responses:

• Include detail 
• Don't generalise 
• Use Media language 
• Apply appropriate theory 
• Are written with confidence 
• See the interaction between text and audience as a complex relationship

Lady Gaga - Born this way

Nirvana 'Nevermind' Classic Albums

Lady Gaga: 'Born This Way' 99 cent sale (2 day Amazon deal)

How Lady Gaga's 99-cent 'Born This Way' Sale Hurt Interscope, Distributors

Let's get one thing straight. The Lady Gaga 99 cent sale for 'Born This Way' was a great thing for the artist, and for Amazon. On a short-term basis, you could even make the case that it was great for the industry.

The 99 cent sale was big mainstream-media news, and that certainly benefited everyone, including other retailers. The album sold 1.1 million units -- 662,000 digital, 449,000 physical--in its debut week ending May 29, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The story lasted all week in the press. It worked the same way that Target and Best Buy circulars work: driving traffic to everyone's stores, not just those two big-box chains, or, in this case, Amazon's site. I'd argue that the glitch arising when Amazon's overwhelmed servers couldn't satisfy customer demand was a good thing, too, since it made the sale even bigger news. Given Amazon's impeccable service reputation, that blip won't hurt it long term.

For the cost of $3.3 million-that is, $8.40 wholesale minus 99 cents retail times 443,000 scans during the two-day sale-Amazon put itself on the map as a digital music merchant, in a way that the same amount of money spent on traditional advertising could never have bought.

But whether the sale helps Interscope remains to be seen. First, Interscope and Universal Music Group Distribution (UMGD) shipped 2.1 million album units before street date. If they knew in advance of Amazon's sale, you can bet they would've cut back on the initial CD allotment.

As is, Interscope has an inventory liability, with some merchants saying they need to return product. And if some of that talk comes from a few retail accounts being miffed over the Amazon deal, some is also due to simple math. The CD album sold 449,000 units of the 2.1 million shipped, for a 21.4 percent sell-through. Second-week sales are at 174,000 units (136,000 CDs), or 27.8 percent sell-through.

A decade ago, major-label shipment formulas called for shipping three units for everyone expected to be scanned in the first week. Nowadays, with a more efficient inventory replenishment, the ratio has dipped under 2-to-1.

But in Lady Gaga's case, UMGD shipped 4.7 units for each first-week scan. Even another big hit single, which would ensure a sooner sell-through of all 2.1 million units, won't stop merchants now from returning the album to improve their cash position. Interscope is probably looking at a few hundred thousand returns, depending on whether the label comes up with a sweetener to keep inventory in stores.

Competing labels and distributors may be even angrier than merchants about the sale. "This was a really bad move," the head of an independent distributor says. "Ninety-nine cents is almost free."

"If this happened in the 1990s, there would have been a big hue and cry from retail, even bigger than what it was this time," the head of sales at a major label says.

But these are different times. And in the digital world, "there are going to be times when music is the toy in the Happy Meal," a UMG executive says. Another Universal exec adds, "If Amazon tries to turn 99 cent superstar albums into a regular thing, I would be outraged."

Yet, some suggest that a few label marketers themselves may now start pushing such a pricing strategy to break an artist, or get an album into the No. 1 spot. Others say that, in the '90s, that inevitably would've followed-but not in today's market, when profit trumps chart success.

For all the talk about how the industry has evolved, though, former distribution executive Jim Caparro says, "It is shocking how consistent the industry is with the past. Today, it is almost parallel to how traditional music retail acted back then, with big accounts looking to steal market share by pricing."

But one executive familiar with Amazon's thinking says the Gaga pricing won't hurt the industry.

"Of course 'Born This Way' is worth more than 99 cents," the executive says. "That's why it created such retail excitement and buzz, when it was offered for 99 cents ... If it wasn't actually worth more, no one would have cared."

Source: www.billboard.com

'In Rainbows': 7 years since Radiohead provided an alternative Record Industry Model

Seven years ago, Radiohead released 'In Rainbows' via their own website, allowing fans to pay as much or as little as they wished.

Some people hailed it as a revolution for the music industry, and a new model for other bands to follow. Others fretted that Radiohead were potentially destroying the careers of thousands of smaller bands by making music seem worthless. There was, it's fair to say, a lot of over-excitement.

Five years on, though, who was right? 'In Rainbows' was a hugely important, influential moment that should inspire today's bands for two reasons.

First: because it showed that the best response to music piracy is to explore new, legal ways to get music into fans' hands. Don't get hung up on the specific method used here – the pay-what-you-want 'honesty box' – but rather see it as a simple example of Radiohead trying something new.

Second: 'In Rainbows' absolutely didn't kill the idea that music should be paid for. What it did do, though, was show that the idea of setting a single, one-size-fits-all price for an album was long overdue a rethink. Not just because a lot of people wanted to pay less or nothing, but because plenty of fans wanted to pay more.

Before explaining those properly, it's worth remembering some of the criticism of 'In Rainbows' after its launch in October 2007. A Guardian piece that month linked Radiohead's scheme with Prince's decision to give his new album away with the Mail on Sunday, suggesting they'd "made it increasingly hard for new acts to survive".

Some big RAWK dinosaurs were also unimpressed. Gene Simmons of Kiss, for example: "That's not a business model that works. I open a store and say 'Come on in and pay whatever you want.' Are you on fucking crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?"

Others thought Radiohead didn't go far enough. Trent Reznor, for example, criticised 'In Rainbows' as "very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale".

Meanwhile, U2's manager Paul McGuinness reckoned the move had "backfired" citing piracy stats showing "60-70 per cent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway, even though it was available for free".

(In fairness, his client Bono stuck up for the band in a letter to the NME, saying they'd been "courageous and imaginative in trying to figure out some new relationship with their audience… Such imagination and courage are in short supply right now".)

It's true: a lot of people downloaded 'In Rainbows' for free, including on BitTorrent. In November 2007, market research firm comScore claimed that only 38 per cent of 'In Rainbows' downloaders had paid, while 62 per cent chose to get it for free – meaning an average price paid overall of $2.26 per download.

Radiohead quickly slammed that research as "wholly inaccurate", but some better stats came later from British collecting society MCPS-PRS and internet metrics firm Big Champagne, who estimated that 400,000 copies of 'In Rainbows' were downloaded on BitTorrent on its day of release alone. Over its first 24 days, the album notched up 2.3m torrent downloads.

A big fat failure, then? Not at all.

"In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts," said Thom Yorke in December 2007, when interviewed by David Byrne for Wired Magazine.

In October 2008, Radiohead's publisher Warner Chappell revealed more stats on 'In Rainbows'' performance at a music industry conference in Iceland.

The album had been bought 3m times, including downloads, CDs and the £40 'Discboxes' that were pre-orderable when the original download went live. 1.75m of those sales were CDs, and 100,000 Discboxes (a cool £4m in gross revenues from the latter alone).

To put it another way: giving 'In Rainbows' away didn't make it worthless. In fact, it was worth a lot more to the band than their previous albums when they'd been signed to a record label.

It showed that a lot of fans really did value Radiohead's music – it helped that the album was great – but also that they valued it at different levels. Letting people choose what they wanted to pay, right up to the £40 Discbox, paid off.

What about ruining things for other bands? It's tough to make money from music in 2012, for reasons – yes, piracy – that existed well before 2007.

Making a career in music means hard work, forging a connection with fans (whether there are 50 of them or five million), trying new things, and making money in a bunch of different ways. iTunes downloads, Spotify streams, gig tickets, merchandise, CDs sold at gigs, YouTube ads, legal BitTorrent bundles, Kickstarter crowdfunding and many more.

US journalist Mike Masnick gave a famous 15-minute presentation at music biz conference Midem in 2009 about why bands should connect with fans and give them a reason to buy – based on a case study of Trent Reznor rather than Radiohead, interestingly.

But it's exactly what Radiohead did with 'In Rainbows'. The pay-what-you-want aspect isn't something to be followed slavishly in 2012: it's the willingness to try it and the connection with fans that made it successful that should be an inspiration.

In many ways, the equivalent of 'In Rainbows' in 2012 is Amanda Palmer's $1.2m Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, which is being hailed/criticised as a model for other artists in exactly the same way 'In Rainbows' was.

Compare this quote from Thom Yorke in that 2007 Wired interview – "It’s not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation" – with this from Palmer in 2012 about her own strategy:

"The truth is: there is no next model. Show me 1,000 talented musicians, each with a unique style and personality, and I’ll show you 1,000 ways to make a career in music…there is no longer an off-the-shelf solution."

'In Rainbows'' honesty box wasn't an off-the-shelf solution either. Rather than copy either, smaller bands should take inspiration instead from the general principles: connecting with fans, and being open to new ways of getting their music out there.

Also, perhaps treat Gene Simmons' views on digital business models with a pinch of salt. Or crack, according to preference.

Stuart Dredge: NME.com

Radiohead: 'The King of Limbs'

The King of Limbs is the eighth studio album by English rock band Radiohead, produced by Nigel Godrich. It was self-released on 18 February 2011 as a download in MP3 and WAV formats, followed by physical CD and 12" vinyl releases on 28 March, a wider digital release via AWAL, and a special "newspaper" edition on 9 May 2011. The physical editions were released through the band's Ticker Tape imprint on XL in the United Kingdom, TBD in theUnited States, and Hostess Entertainment in Japan.

Following the painstaking recording and relatively conventional rock instrumentation of In Rainbows, Radiohead employed a more spontaneous process to develop The King of Limbs, sampling their own recordings with turntablist techniques inspired by DJing. The band provided little information on the album, not even a track listing, before its release, and did not discuss it in detail until nearly eight months later. Singer Thom Yorke described it as an expression of "physical movements" and "wildness"; the title King of Limbs possibly refers to an oak tree in Wiltshire's Savernake Forest, thought to be 1,000 years old.

The King of Limbs has the shortest running time and track listing of any Radiohead album. As with 2000's Kid A, no singles were released, though a music video was released for the track "Lotus Flower". It received mostly positive reviews from critics, though opinion was more divided than for In Rainbows.The King of Limbs was nominated for five categories in the 54th Grammy Awards, including Best Alternative Music Album, and was named one of the best albums of 2011 by several music journals. It charted in the top ten in several countries and became a bestseller on vinyl.

The album was followed by a remix album, TKOL RMX 1234567, and a live video, The King of Limbs – From the Basement.

Release:

Radiohead announced The King of Limbs on their website on 14 February 2011 with a release date of 19 February, five days later. On 18 February, the band's blog, Dead Air Space, published a song from the album, "Lotus Flower", with an accompanying music video uploaded to Radiohead's official YouTube channel. The band released the album later that day - a day earlier than first announced - with guitarist Ed O'Brien writing: "It's Friday... It's almost the weekend...It's a full moon....You can download The King of Limbs now if you so wish!"

The download of The King of Limbs is DRM-free. The MP3 download costs £6, US$9, or €7; the WAV download costs £9, US$14, or €11. Customers could also order a special "newspaper edition" of the album, released 9 May 2011, for £30, US$48 or €36 with the MP3 download, and £33, US$53 or €39 with the WAV download (shipping included). The "newspaper" edition contains "two 10-inch vinyl records in a special record sleeve, many large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork, a compact disc, and a colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic package".

To promote the CD and vinyl release of The King of Limbs, Radiohead distributed a free single-issue newspaper, the Universal Sigh, at record shops across the world on 28 March 2011. It is separate from the "newspaper" edition of The King of Limbs. Artist Stanley Donwood described the Universal Sigh (the title taken from lyrics to "Bloom") as "a 12-page tabloid, printed using web-offset lithography on newsprint paper, just like the LA Weekly or London Lite, or Daily Mail." The paper features artwork, poetry, and lyrics, along with short stories by Stanley Donwood, Jay Griffiths and Robert Macfarlane. The free newspaper concept came from Donwood witnessing "a seething mass of humanity at the top of the steps down to Oxford Circus tube station, where amongst the heaving throng of commuters were valiant distributors of London Lite and Metro, and the Evening Standard, attempting to hand them out." Donwood and Thom Yorke appeared in person to distribute copies of the Universal Sigh to fans in London.

In June 2011, Radiohead announced a series of remixes of tracks from the album. These remixes and others are compiled on the remix album TKOL RMX 1234567.^[

Radiohead performed The King of Limbs in its entirety for The King of Limbs – From The Basement, broadcast in July 2011 and released on DVD and Blu-ray in December 2011.

Wikipedia

MS4 - Text, Industry & Audience: Music

'A' Grade Exam Response

Section B: Industry & Audience

B4. Explore how your chosen texts use digital technology in their marketing. (30)

Digital technology such as the internet and online stores such as itunes all present new ways for a consumer to discover or buy new music.

Lady Gaga is a perfect example with her first album/CD 'The Fame' selling over 12 million copies with many of these downloaded from the internet and thus making it the most downloaded release of all time. As a consequence of this new digital system and method for obtaining music, fans of artists can now retrieve albums quickly without the need for going to a music store such as HMV. The internet was also used to promote her album sales with posters and the ability to listen to several of the tracks earlier than their official release on youtube, therefore promoting sales and interest to fans who will then go to buy the physical version of the album. Sites such as itunes also marketed 'The Fame' by creating billboards over their webpage and adding links to the itunes store to the Lady Gaga album once it was made available to boost sales to the consumer via convergence. Lady Gaga is also well known for using Twitter to communicate with her social networking teenage fans on a regular basis, in this way she continually cultivates and reinforces a personal relationship with her fans to preserve her popularity and mainstream pop status.

Her popularity gradually increased through successive single releases such as 'Just Dance', 'Papparazzi' and 'Pokerface'. The high production values together with the glamorous and provocative appearance of Lady Gaga herself also made her videos compulsive viewing for her fans on youtube, where she now has her own channel.  She gains millions of hits per video and encourages countless of fans to create viral copycat productions that have increased her online profile immensely.

A band, however, who did not follow this modern mainstream method of marketing was Radiohead who are an indie/alternative rock band from Oxford UK. Instead of using this same method as artists in the mainstream such as Lady Gaga, Radiohead themselves marketed their new album release 'In Rainbows' by self-promotion through youtube with a number of tracks played live. They also made their album available via download only through their own website and allowed the fans/consumers to pay whatever price they wanted to including nothing and download the recording quickly and immediately and in high quality without even leaving their homes. Releasing the album in this way also allowed the release to occur globally at the same time, increasing overall sales (1.2 million copies) and limiting the possibility of the illegal recordings being distributed. Although this unique style of marketing did not initially produce a profit for the band, they gained a great deal of negative, as well as positive, press coverage as a result for bypassing the usual record industry models. Live performance appearances also helped promote the release on the SkyArts satellite channel to a more adult highbrow audience in direct contrast to the way that Lady Gaga was marketed.

After its initial download only release, 'In Rainbows' was released with a more mainstream physical CD release available in music stores and other online sites such as itunes. The release, even though initially only available as a download, still gained chart success and also became the bands most successful release to date. Clearly allowing the fans/audience to pay whatever they wanted to did not damage physical or chart sales and signalled a warning to the record industry who are presently struggling to recapture a sales market that is falling due to digital file sharing and bootlegging.

A band that did not have access to digital marketing during their heyday was 'grunge'/metal three-piece Nirvana. For their releases in the early 1990's, such as 'Nevermind', they were totally reliant upon marketing via their major label record company Geffen. The underground music scene and music press coverage also helped promote the bands profile but 'word of mouth' was essential in spreading the message about the authenticity of the band and their blistering live performances in the days before online technology became commonplace.

Digital technology was not available during these times but their popularity is now widely promoted via itunes and other online sites such as Facebook as a form of nostalgia for both those that enjoyed their music at the time and new fans. Clearly the suicide of the lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain has continued to assist the mythology of Nirvana and generate sales of all of their releases on the internet and perpetuate the appeal for 'grunge' music in general. After his death albums such as 'Nirvana's Greatest Hits' were released on online stores and with the 20th Anniversary of his death looming the internet is likely to spread promotion further.

Digital technology is highly used in order to market and promote artists in the music industry today as it is cheap, immediate and of a high quality reducing the costs of production and distribution for music labels. It allows for new artists to become widely known through social networking sites as Arctic Monkeys did with Myspace. 

Radiohead - Digital Technology

Spotify reveal price paid to artist per play....you may be surprised.

Spotify has responded to critics by revealing how much acts can expect to earn from the music streaming site.

The company said it pays an average of $0.007 per play, according to figures on its new website Spotify Artists, aimed specifically at musicians.

Explaining its business model, Spotify said it had paid more than $1bn (£612m) in royalties since its 2008 launch.

Earlier this year Radiohead singer Thom Yorke pulled material from the site in protest at how much it pays artists.

Removing his solo album The Eraser and Atoms for Peace, a side project with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Yorke tweeted that he was "standing up for our fellow musicians".

"Make no mistake new artists you discover on #Spotify will no[t] get paid," he continued on Twitter. "Meanwhile shareholders will shortly being rolling in it. Simples."

However the new website, which said $500m (£306m) of the $1bn it has paid out in royalties was during 2013 alone, has urged musicians to consider accumulative earnings from a successful album, rather than focusing on plays per song.

Spotify said it has kept just 30% of the money from subscriptions
to its premium service and advertising.

"Our belief has always been that if we can offer fans a listening experience superior to piracy, then they will be happy to pay for it, and in turn we are happy to pay out nearly 70% of all the money we earn in royalties," said Spotify on the site.

"We believe that this is the fair approach to take, and that as we grow we will become an increasingly significant contributor to artists' financial lives."

This 70% is usually paid direct to record labels, who take their cut before it reaches managers and artists.

Transparency first

Music Week editor Tim Ingham told the BBC: "The most important thing is that Spotify is finally being fully transparent with its numbers for the first time; great news for artists in an era when performers need data every bit as much as they need popularity."

Using a series of charts, the Spotify website has illustrated how much a niche indie album could earn per month ($3,300) compared to a breakthrough indie album ($76,000), a Spotify top 10 album ($145,000) and what it calls a global hit album ($425,000 a month in royalties).

Currently with 6 million subscribers worldwide, Spotify said several artists were paid more than $3m (£1.8m) in 2013.

A set of ambitious predictions based on the site hitting 40 million subscribers estimated that a band with an album in the Spotify top ten could expect to get paid $734,000 a month in royalties, compared with the $145,000 it would get now.

Mr Ingham said that while the per-stream figure of between $0.006 and $0.0084 (an average of £0.004) might "initially seem alarming", it is actually "more positive than it first appears".

"Unlike buying a CD or download, streaming is not a one-off payment," he said.

"Hundreds of millions of streams of tracks are happening each and every day, which quickly multiplies the potential revenues on offer - and is a constant long-term source of income for artists."

He added that if Spotify increases its reach to tens of millions of subscribers as planned, it would increase the per-stream rate "dramatically".

"This should be achievable when you consider that YouTube draws in a billion unique users each month - it's a tiny fraction of that number," said Ingham.

Spotify's new site also made the point that it pays out more than double that of a video streaming site such as YouTube.