Websites

The website that I have looked at is the official Eminem website. At first it doesn't look very interesting but this is much more to it than you can see. For example if you were to click on the "news" you can see there are interviews with Eminem and also news about what is going on in his new music videos etc.

If you click on the "album" drop down you are directly given links to iTunes for all of Eminems albums. This is good promoting as you can go straight onto his website and buy his album. It is very good as you can buy any album from his first ever released one in 1999 called The Slim Shady LP all the way to his newest one Recovery released 6/22/2010.

The "video" link is quite self explanatory, you click on it and you can watch music videos from all of his songs as well as buying them off iTunes and Amazon.

Opening up the "events" would normally bring up all of the shows that Eminem is going to perform at within the next couple of months, but at the moment Eminem is not on tour so there is nothing under this drop down.

When you click on "community" three different links come up and they are for forums, this is where Eminem fans can discuss this artist as well as ask questions to one-another.

The "store" drop down takes to you the Eminem merchandise where you can buy t-shirts and hoodies etc.

Finally there is a link to the top left of the screen where you can choose to follow Eminem on Twitter, Facebook and myspace.

The online revolution

The online revolution has had a huge impact on every artist all over the world, in some cases it being an advantage, but in others it also having its down sides.

The online revolution meant that artists could now become more well known as they were able to sign up to social networking websites and also upload videos onto posting websites such as YouTube.com, for people to watch all over the world. But with this came its down sides, illegal downloading has hit all artists hard. Illegal downloading on software such as Limewire has cost many artists lots of money as more and more people are beginning to spend less money for the music that they now listen to.

It is not only the illegal downloading that has lost the artists sales on the internet, it has also lots them sales in the shops.

An artist that has used the online revolution to their advantage is the Arctic Monkeys. They started off by just posting their music onto a social networking site, myspace.com where they gained popularity. After having many listeners they began to hold gigs and each week they would see more and more people turn out in their numbers. Eventually they were scouted by a major record label "the domino effect" and have had success since then.

Other artist that has made it huge (and is still on the up) is sixteen year old Justin Bieber who started off by posting videos onto YouTube.com. After receiving millions of views he was approached by Global popstar Usher who asked him if he would collaborate with him, an offer he could not refuse, and from then on Justin hasn't looked back.

Having a 'niche'

Creating a niche is the meaning when an artists creates something that has never been seen before. For example when they began to use their humour and videos to show that they were different. At first many people didn't like this, as they believed that they were being too cheeky for their own good, but as time went on they became more well known and more liked all over the world.

In our music video we are going to try and create a niche also. The way that we are going to do this, at the moment is not completely known, but we know that we want our video to be a parody "a mocking video" either of already made videos or just so random that nobody can take it seriously.

The way that we are going to make our niche is hopefully by getting hold of a chicken suit (as our song is about nandos) and just do lots of random things with it.

Although all of the above was our original idea, it seems that we may be forced to change our song. This is because we as a group think that the song may be too difficult to make a music video for. The reason for this is, as a song it is quite one dimensional, as it is only talking about one thing through-out the song, limiting what we can film to use as footage.

This may not be what we are wanting to do considering that we are going start filming soon, but we do have another song already lined up because we knew that they may be a problem before we made our final decision. Our other song is called outkast by Arthur Smith, who has recently wrote this song.

We have now chosen to change all of these ideas and start again completely over. We are now definitely sticking with an artist called "the nites" who are band made of two people. They are an acoustic, pop, rock band and the song that we have chosen is called "Whatever gets you through".

Album covers

The album above is by Little Boots, the graphics that have been in this cover are very good. It also includes the artist on the front cover.



Here is an album by La Roux. This like many other album covers that get released is very plain, the reason why it will sell well is because La Roux is shown on the front on the album cover as their star motif, meaning she is prompting herself with her own face.



Here is an album cover by Florence and the Machine that stands out from the crowd completely, it is very different and is a very good and clever design. That have used the name of the album well with the images and they have used the artist as their star motif.



The album cover that we are going to try to make ours like like will be one similar to Eminem. The reason why we have chosen this as a group was because he uses plain covers yet they are very meaningful and also interesting.



The ACDC album cover from above is very simplistic but it is very effective. The reason for this album cover being successful is because it stands out very will with the cannon on its own on the front cover with just the name of the Artist and album.

All of these album covers have the same thing in common, they all have a star motif. Whether it is an image of the artist or lead singer of the band, or if it is just an image that fans can relate to, to know that it is that particular artists album. This is our task, we are going to have to think of a very good star motif if we want our album cover to stand out from the crowd and want people to buy it even if they haven't heard the music.

Intertextuality In Music Video's

We have been watching particular types of music video that use a video game software to make music videos. These type of music video usually feature the artist as a cartoon form in a vitual world, for example:

Robbie Williams- Let love be your energy
This music video features Robbie Williams in cartoon form running through a 'virtual world'. It has lots of different locations showing him running non-stop throughout the video.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers- Californication
This video features the whole of the band in cartoon form. This music video takes the form of a video game showing the characters completing challenges and gaining points.

Gorillaz- Clint Eastwood
This music video is different to the other two as it uses a different style of cartoon. This video seems to make no sense what so ever. Gorillaz are known for just being cartoons and not revealing their true identity.

Different types of music video

So far we have learnt that there are three different types of music video. The first one is a narrative based video, this type of video tells the audience a story throughout the music video. A good example of this is Lady GaGa's bad romance. The second type of music video that we have learnt about is called a performance based video. This type of music video is usually used for rock bands such as Green day, where the band are featured in the music video singing along to the lyrics whilst something is also happening to go with the lyrics. The final type of music video is called a concept based video. This sort of video uses original ideas that haven't been used in a video before to try and make the video different and easy to recognise. A band that have used this is Ok-Go in the song here it goes again.

Goodwin's Theory

Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features which distinguish the music video as a form:

- There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
- There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
- He says that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visuals and the song plus the artist.
- Relationships are built between these in the video, and the close-ups of the artists gives them the representation and publicity they require.
- Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos.
- Intertextual references, either to other music videos or to films and TV texts, these provide further gratification and pleasure for the viewers/fans.

http://www.slideshare.net/chrystina13/goodwins-theory-3042079