Interview with a successful music manager

Emma is a British music manager that has several agencies and works for the publishing company 'Kobalt'. Emma attended a performing arts school specialising in music theatre and performed in the West End as a child. Emma had an ambition to sing but her singing career never shot off. She then became a song writer for many artists including, Craig David, Blue and Gary Barlow. Emma got into TV and began to work with Simon Cowell on his record label 'Syco', working as a developer on BGT, AGT and Xfactor. She was also a vocal coach for the contestants on the show and helped them launch their career with 'Syco' record label. 

The music industry has developed over years and so one person can have many different roles. 

However, record labels now looks for people who have already set up their own fan base and social media. For example, nowadays a record label would be more likely to take an artist who has got a YouTube channel and an Instagram showcasing their talents over a hugely talented singer performing in a pub every other day. 

Social media has hugely influenced the music industry and many artists. Social media platforms like, Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube provide a simple place to release your music to the rest of the world. 

An example of this is a singer and music maker from Salt-Lake city, Ritt Momney. Ritt contacted Emma's publishing company to gain permission to release a cover of 'Put your records on' by Corinne Bailey Rae who is signed with Emma's company. They gave Ritt permission to release the cover and days later his song blew up on with over 250million streams on Spotify whilst Corinne Bailey Rae has 347million streams on Spotify. Tik Tok was the spark for Ritt's cover as a huge influencer discovered his song and used it as the background music in a makeup tutorial video. 

This example shows how much social media has impacted the music industry and how simple and shocking being successful can be. 

Put Your Records On - Corinne Bailey Rae

Put Your Records On - Ritt Momney

Justin Bieber album cover analysis

 Justin Bieber's first album was 'My World'

This album includes the song 'One Time' which is Justin Bieber's first ever music video. 

This album cover shows Justin's teenage characteristic, like the music video does. It also portrays Justin's looks, targeting his main audience of teenage girls. This directly links to the music video of 'One Time' and the teenage themes because of the location and content of the music video.

Matt's music video task

Find a recent artists first music video:

Justin Bieber - One Time

What was the label saying about them in the video?

At a house party trying to impress a girl. Relating to teenagers at the time and targeting a specific audience. 

Andrew Goodwin

Music video convention theory:

A link between the visuals and the lyrics - Could be very literal or metaphorical or symbolical.

A link between the music and the visuals - Pace and rhythm of visuals matches the pace and rhythm of the music.

Reflect the common features of the genre of music - Reflect colours or atmosphere of the music

Use of intertextual reference - References to different texts such as reference to movies or other songs or to people.

Notions of looking and voyeurism - Make artist enjoyable to watch by sexualising them - Male gaze - We also have subversion of male gaze (sexualising males).

Reflective of the record label - Financial status, Power / Connections, Other artists signed by the same record label (collaborations), global location of the record label, target audience of the record label.

Star image is a key focus - lots of repeated close ups - focus on artists image. 

Performance/ Narrative / Concept based:

Performance based music video:

This music video includes a compilation of clips of the band playing their song 'Pumped Up Kicks' in a studio set up to look like a live performance. There are also other short clips of the band travelling/ touring. These clips could be to promote an upcoming tour or perhaps showing how much the band loves touring and meeting fans.

Narrative based music video:

This music video has an interesting narrative and directly correlates to the lyrics. The music video shows 

Abstract based music video: 

Fake Instagram account for up and coming band - The Appointed

 I created an Instagram account for my created band using the character sheet. 

I created posts to attract audiences by telling them to stay tuned.

I promoted the bands coming up tour around the UK in order to keep the audience excited. 

I also created posts to engage the audience by actively making them think. 

Richard Dyer's theory on 'Stars'

What is Dyer's star theory?

Dyer's star theory is that the most well known singers or actors that we know as 'stars' are really just normal people with talents. They're just sold to us in creative ways to make us think that they're better then us but in reality there are millions of people around the world with the same amount of talent that aren't discovered or don't have the connections or money that some stars did when they were younger. A star is an image and not the real person (a character).

Record labels will take elements of their personality and create a ideal character from that for their audience. 

Stars are influenced and controlled, however the star must be ordinary to relate to their audience but also extraordinary for the audience to aspire to.

Take Nicki Minaj for example. 

Nicki Minaj's star image has been extremely sexualised. One of the aspects she is most known for is the sexual dance move 'twerking'.

Nicki Minaj is recognised by these characteristics as record labels want to create, an extraordinary character for the audience to aspire to. However, the record labels also want to create an ordinary character for the audience to relate to. Nicki Manaj was from a very unwealthy family and her music helped her family pay funds. This could relate to a lot of aspiring supporters in similar situations.