Florence and the Machine

Florence and the Machine’s success began through ‘BBC Introducing’ who were the main people behind getting the band known and into the music industry. This enabled them to gain mainstream success very quickly, because of how well-known the name of ‘BBC Introducing’ is.

The band started playing gigs in London and the surrounding area in 2007. In 2008, they supported MGMT on their tour of Europe.  

With the BBC backing the band, it meant they were able to pay at well-known festivals in 2008 including Glastonbury, Bestival and Reading and Leeds Festival. This meant their audience was continuously growing and the band was becoming more popular. 

At the end of the year, they played at The Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust, which led to the release of their debut album ‘Lungs’ in 2009 – it was number one in the UK album charts for 2 weeks.

The band now use their website and blog to keep their audience updated on upcoming tours and public appearances. They've made their music available online through iTunes and Spotify. As well as advertising online, they also advertise their CD’s through television adverts and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. 

They have now released a new album 'Ceremonials' which had been advertised in the same way (TV adverts and social networking sites), but because of the online revolution, much more of the adverts emphasise downloading the album on iTunes rather than buying it.

Music Videos

Music Videos on Prezi

The Online Revolution

Due to the intense and fast development of the types of media music can be played and brought from these days, the internet has played a huge part in changing the music industry.

Music can now be downloaded from various internet site and iTunes (owned by Apple). Apple has kept developing and improving their music playing products, expanding their market and ways in which music can be played, brought and watched. For example, products such as the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod. Each of these products have been developed and are on at least the third developed product (e.g. iPhone 5). This has meant that there is much less of a need for buying music in the forms of CD’s from high street stores such as HMV, and is much more efficient for consumers as they can listen to music directly from their device, or on an internet website they can access on their device. 

Through these changes in the music market, artists can appeal to a younger audience as these are the people who have grown up whilst the industry has changed.  It is also more convenient for the audience because they are ale to buy individual tracks rather than a whole album.

Artists also use social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook to advertise their music. Facebook has over 1 billion users, as well as 600 million mobile users, with Twitter having 150 million users, and MySpace having 25 million users. This expands their audience and also appeals to the existing audience. They can also upload music on these sites as well as advertising upcoming gigs and pubic appearances. Music magazine’s such as Q and NME have also developed through the online revolution as they can be downloaded from the internet, making it much more easily accessible to the audience.

In my opinion, I think the online revolution has had a positive impact on how easy artists can communicate and sell their music to their audience. This also means that the younger generation, who are predominantly the main group who listen and buy music, can access it easier.  However, it had affected the high street stores such as HMV, as they have recently had to close a lot of stores because of downloadable music and falling sales. They now only have 273 stores in 4 countries, which is significantly lower than 5-10 years ago.

Gotye Video Research

In the making of this video, I used iTunes, Windows Movie Maker and Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Ivy and Gold

On the right of this picture there is some background research on the band I am doing my digipak, magazine advert and music video for. This gives me an idea of the type of music they make and who they try to appeal to. 

I've also just written a few notes about my ideas on the left of the page.

Similar Ideas

I found this magazine advert in 'Glamour' magazine, and liked the idea of using balloons lifting the model. I thought I could try something similar to this idea in one of my photo shoots for my digipak or magazine advert.

Ivy and Gold photo research

Continuing my research into the band, I found a few of Ivy and Gold's photos on their website.

Lyrics analysis

This is a lyrics analysis and annotation of the song we are using for our music video - 'Home' by Ivy and Gold.

Initial Ideas

Photo shoot ideas

Current digipak photoshoot ideas: - Using patterned parts of the body e.g. using strong coloured eye shadow, even making patterns like this

- Using patterns on a girls lips e.g. using gems, painting patterns, glitter, lipstick, lip gloss (mixing colours)

Current location ideas: - fields (idyllic setting) - calm, freedom, lonliness - Dull weather - shows dull atmosphere and reflects mood

Finding an artist

When looking for an artist, my class were told we had to find an unsigned artist's music for our video, digipak and magazine advert. The majority of the people in my class knew someone their age which had recorded a few songs ready to send to record labels, or were wanting to pursue a career in the music industry. Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone like this, so was on the hunt for an unsigned music artist. I knew I wanted to have a female singer for the ideas I already had in mind (using inspirations such as Florence and the Machine, Adele, Marina and the Diamonds etc.) Using these ideas I searched the internet and still couldn't find anyone who was the calm acoustic genre I was looking for.

 At this point I thought maybe I should just change my idea completely and approach a rock band, but then I found a band on YouTube called 'Ivy and Gold'. I had heard some of their covers before and found one of their original written songs, 'Home'. I thought the chance of them letting me use their song was very slim because they were already established on YouTube, but decided to email them anyway;

 Hi guys For a media A2 project we've been asked to make a music video with music from a local artist. We've been listening to some of your music and it sounds great! All we need is the mp3 file of one of your original songs and we'll make our own video for it as part of our coursework. No money will be made or anything, it's just for our A2 project. Only thing is it can't be a cover, but we love your song 'home' :) If you wanted any money we'd be able to negotiate (within reason, we're only students haha) Would be great if you could help us out! Thanks, Lucy Kirbyshire :) P.s we love your music!

 Here is their reply: Hey Lucy, Yes that's fine you can use 'Home'. As you're students you don't need to pay anything, just make sure that we are credited wherever you post it ect...... Also if you could buy it off of iTunes for support that would be great :) It should come up if you type in 'emperors home'. This is our old name before we changed it to Ivy and Gold. Be sure to send us the video when you are finished, would love to see what you guys produce. Glad that you love the music! Keep your eyes peeled for the EP :) Thanks, Rachel

Music artist background research

Walking through a door video

For a set video task, we were asked to make a short clip containing a person walking through a door - we chose to use curtains instead to experiment. When editing this video, we matched up the music timings and lyrics to the action being filmed. For example, when the artist says 'hey hey' the person looks at the camera. In this video, we experimented with camera angles, positioning and editing using slow motion. We also purposely made it not match up correctly because of this. One thing we took on board from filming this is that we need to ensure when we film our actual coursework music video task, we need to have the camera in a horizontal position through all of our shots because in the editing stages when we tried to turn one of the shots around, we had to crop the frame which meant we lost the majority of the background.

Britney Spears Task

To help me understand the basics of camera angles and positioning as well as using different types of video cameras, I shot a short extract from the Britney Spears music video for 'Hit me baby one more time'. After shooting my frames, I edited the clips in the programme iMovie. This also gave me a little background on how to use this programme too, preparing me for my main coursework task of my own music video.