http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_music
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=video&cd=4&ved=0CE4QywgwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mtv.com%2Fmusic%2Findie%2F&rct=j&q=indie%20music&ei=g5yuTfq6A8iOswaTir3hDA&usg=AFQjCNEWA58JSFk7FKgTEqoj8U8le-AZOw&cad=rja
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/genres/rockandindie
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Blog on Indie and links
Remember that a lot of you were not 'classic' indie and shared a lot of conventions with other genres. Indie by it's own definition is nebulous as it means 'independent' which is definately you (being independent) but the visual features are frequently swiped.
Extracts from Nielsen's Global Media Report
Discussing the trajectory of the online medium in the midst of an historic economic downturn is a perilous business. Assaulted every day with downward-facing red arrows, many of the indicators concerning all things digital veer to the negative:
• Online media’s “favorite child status” (i.e. a long track record of outstripping the growth of every other medium by a wide margin) appears to have diminished over the last few months
• Online advertising by the Financial Services, Retail and Auto industries has shrunk at a dizzying pace over the last six months
• Online display advertising’s share of revenue has plateaued at 20% of total online ad spend in the U.S., and no panacea appears to be on the horizon
• Despite online video’s persistent positive buzz, actual usage is averaging around six minutes per day in the U.S.
• The social media trend is today’s industry darling, but a monetization formula continues to elude the globe’s brightest marketers
But even the most cynical observer has to be swayed by positive developments that define the longer-term opportunities for the online medium and the e-commerce channel:
• Around the globe the online population is looking more and more like the overall population meaning that in a few short years, online access has moved from being a luxury or something cool to an essential, basic requirement
• Packaged goods manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and telecommunications firms, three of the largest historical spenders on traditional media, are moving online at a pace we haven’t seen before, even as the recession continues to deepen
• The audience growth and engagement quotient of online video is forcing marketers to positively re-assess the value of the online experience
• Adoption of social networking capabilities, by both consumers AND corporations, has crossed the chasm in what appears to be the blink of an eye. In the age of Twitter, feedback barriers have all but disappeared, creating a near friction-free environment for playing back brand experience, campaign reactions or brand events.
• Search continues to be an indispensible tool for all online denizens and opportunities for additional growth continue to emerge. Search across social media networks is the likely next opportunity for search engines
• Access to social networking sites via mobile devices almost tripled during 2008, largely due to rising smartphone penetration and improved network speeds. Increasingly consumers are turning to their phones for a wide range of online content
A Quick Look at Global Usage and Demographics
Exhibit 1 shows a variety of country stats regarding online usage. Americans spend the most time online during the month (a bit more than 2 hours per day), with users in France, Japan and the UK not far behind.
Age-by-Country Demographics
While the demographic-profi le differences of users around the globe aren’t that pronounced, there are some interesting observations (Exhibit 2).
The U.S. online population skews more to the age 50+ than the other countries listed, with the U.K. and Switzerland tied for second and Australia third. Brazil is more skewed to the youth (2-17) demographic, and China (CN in the chart in Exhibit 2) by a signifi cant margin to the 18-34 segment.
Video and Social Media Lead The Way
It is rare to see segments signifi cantly grow from BOTH an audience and an engagement standpoint, but we are seeing exceptional growth over the last couple of years in both video
and social media sites.
While Member Communities have been garnering impressive audience numbers for the last fi ve years, video audiences have been growing at meteoric rates, surpassing e-mail audiences in November 2007 (Exhibit 5). And from a time spent perspective, Member Communities surpassed e-mail for the fi rst time in February 2009. Video has been running neck and neck with search for the last year or so (Exhibit 6).
Cross Media Perspectives
The story within the story of the emerging market for online video is in understanding the interplay between viewing video online and TV viewership. As recent studies show that the amount of time that consumers spend watching TV continues to grow (now 5.5 hours per day), how likely is it for online viewership to take audience away from TV? And how can we compare and contrast the user experience when viewing content on TV vs. online video?
Recent Nielsen TV and Online fusion studies, compares a day of primetime network television audience for each of the major broadcasters with video usage to the Web sites of each of the broadcasters. Based on this analysis, as well as other fusion studies, a few points around cross-media video usage become clear. First, the duplication levels for TV programs and their corresponding online video streams tend to be relatively low, with internet adding approximately 2% additional reach in a given month. Also, there is no evidence that the Internet is cannibalizing TV use. In fact, Nielsen studies have shown that high consumers of TV are also high consumers of the Internet: high-intensity media consumers are high intensity media consumers regardless of media type.
Engagement
Regarding engagement, Nielsen IAG data indicate that the advertising impact of the Internet can add 15 points of lift above TV in terms of brand recall and 18 points of lift in mesage recall. So, not only is the Internet adding incremental reach to a TV media buy, but it is also creating significant additional effectiveness (Exhibit 13).
1. Consumers are looking for deals in a tough economy,
whether they intend to make the purchase online or offl ine
2. With declines in newspaper circulation, a key channel for distribution of printed coupons and advertising, manufacturers and retailers are looking for new ways to move product volume
(Exhibit 31).
The Whole Thing
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/nielsen-online-global-lanscapefinal1.pdf
• Online media’s “favorite child status” (i.e. a long track record of outstripping the growth of every other medium by a wide margin) appears to have diminished over the last few months
• Online advertising by the Financial Services, Retail and Auto industries has shrunk at a dizzying pace over the last six months
• Online display advertising’s share of revenue has plateaued at 20% of total online ad spend in the U.S., and no panacea appears to be on the horizon
• Despite online video’s persistent positive buzz, actual usage is averaging around six minutes per day in the U.S.
• The social media trend is today’s industry darling, but a monetization formula continues to elude the globe’s brightest marketers
But even the most cynical observer has to be swayed by positive developments that define the longer-term opportunities for the online medium and the e-commerce channel:
• Around the globe the online population is looking more and more like the overall population meaning that in a few short years, online access has moved from being a luxury or something cool to an essential, basic requirement
• Packaged goods manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and telecommunications firms, three of the largest historical spenders on traditional media, are moving online at a pace we haven’t seen before, even as the recession continues to deepen
• The audience growth and engagement quotient of online video is forcing marketers to positively re-assess the value of the online experience
• Adoption of social networking capabilities, by both consumers AND corporations, has crossed the chasm in what appears to be the blink of an eye. In the age of Twitter, feedback barriers have all but disappeared, creating a near friction-free environment for playing back brand experience, campaign reactions or brand events.
• Search continues to be an indispensible tool for all online denizens and opportunities for additional growth continue to emerge. Search across social media networks is the likely next opportunity for search engines
• Access to social networking sites via mobile devices almost tripled during 2008, largely due to rising smartphone penetration and improved network speeds. Increasingly consumers are turning to their phones for a wide range of online content
A Quick Look at Global Usage and Demographics
Exhibit 1 shows a variety of country stats regarding online usage. Americans spend the most time online during the month (a bit more than 2 hours per day), with users in France, Japan and the UK not far behind.
Age-by-Country Demographics
While the demographic-profi le differences of users around the globe aren’t that pronounced, there are some interesting observations (Exhibit 2).
The U.S. online population skews more to the age 50+ than the other countries listed, with the U.K. and Switzerland tied for second and Australia third. Brazil is more skewed to the youth (2-17) demographic, and China (CN in the chart in Exhibit 2) by a signifi cant margin to the 18-34 segment.
Video and Social Media Lead The Way
It is rare to see segments signifi cantly grow from BOTH an audience and an engagement standpoint, but we are seeing exceptional growth over the last couple of years in both video
and social media sites.
While Member Communities have been garnering impressive audience numbers for the last fi ve years, video audiences have been growing at meteoric rates, surpassing e-mail audiences in November 2007 (Exhibit 5). And from a time spent perspective, Member Communities surpassed e-mail for the fi rst time in February 2009. Video has been running neck and neck with search for the last year or so (Exhibit 6).
Cross Media Perspectives
The story within the story of the emerging market for online video is in understanding the interplay between viewing video online and TV viewership. As recent studies show that the amount of time that consumers spend watching TV continues to grow (now 5.5 hours per day), how likely is it for online viewership to take audience away from TV? And how can we compare and contrast the user experience when viewing content on TV vs. online video?
Recent Nielsen TV and Online fusion studies, compares a day of primetime network television audience for each of the major broadcasters with video usage to the Web sites of each of the broadcasters. Based on this analysis, as well as other fusion studies, a few points around cross-media video usage become clear. First, the duplication levels for TV programs and their corresponding online video streams tend to be relatively low, with internet adding approximately 2% additional reach in a given month. Also, there is no evidence that the Internet is cannibalizing TV use. In fact, Nielsen studies have shown that high consumers of TV are also high consumers of the Internet: high-intensity media consumers are high intensity media consumers regardless of media type.
Engagement
Regarding engagement, Nielsen IAG data indicate that the advertising impact of the Internet can add 15 points of lift above TV in terms of brand recall and 18 points of lift in mesage recall. So, not only is the Internet adding incremental reach to a TV media buy, but it is also creating significant additional effectiveness (Exhibit 13).
1. Consumers are looking for deals in a tough economy,
whether they intend to make the purchase online or offl ine
2. With declines in newspaper circulation, a key channel for distribution of printed coupons and advertising, manufacturers and retailers are looking for new ways to move product volume
(Exhibit 31).
The Whole Thing
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/nielsen-online-global-lanscapefinal1.pdf
What are the 1a conventions?
Digital Technology
What is it?
• digital technology refers to hardware, software and online technology, so the cameras, the computers, the packages you used and the programs online that you have worked with. It is worth considering how all this inter-links.
Post-Production
What is it?
• It would actually fall under digital technology as well, so if that comes up it would probably represent an expansion of points you'd make in one section of digital technology.
• It is really about everything you do after constructing the raw materials for your production; so once you have taken photos and written text, how do you manipulate it all in photoshop or desktop publishing for a print product or once you have shot your video, what do you do to it in editing.
Research and Planning
What is it?
• research refers to looking at real media and audiences to inform your thinking about a media production and also how you record all that research
• Planning refers to all the creative and logistical thinking and all the organisation that goes on in putting the production together so that everything works and again gives you the chance to write about how you kept records of it.
Use of Real Media Conventions
What is it?
• Use of real media conventions involves consideration of other texts that you looked at and how skillfully you were able to weave their conventions into your work or ways in which you might have challenged them.
Creativity
What is it?
• Creativity is the hardest one in many ways because it involves thinking about what the creative process might mean.
• Wikipedia describes it as "a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight."
• For your projects it might involve considering where ideas came from, how you worked collaboratively to share ideas, how you changed things or even how you used tools like the programs to achieve something imaginative.
But that’s my evaluation?!
• Most of these are the areas that you covered in the evaluation task.
• This time, you are putting together ideas from evaluations and standing a bit further back to look across your production work and reflecting on how you developed across the course.
• Feel free to acknowledge weaknesses and to reflect upon how you learned from them and how you overcame problems.
• It is not a place to be defensive about your work but to really reflect on it!
What is it?
• digital technology refers to hardware, software and online technology, so the cameras, the computers, the packages you used and the programs online that you have worked with. It is worth considering how all this inter-links.
Post-Production
What is it?
• It would actually fall under digital technology as well, so if that comes up it would probably represent an expansion of points you'd make in one section of digital technology.
• It is really about everything you do after constructing the raw materials for your production; so once you have taken photos and written text, how do you manipulate it all in photoshop or desktop publishing for a print product or once you have shot your video, what do you do to it in editing.
Research and Planning
What is it?
• research refers to looking at real media and audiences to inform your thinking about a media production and also how you record all that research
• Planning refers to all the creative and logistical thinking and all the organisation that goes on in putting the production together so that everything works and again gives you the chance to write about how you kept records of it.
Use of Real Media Conventions
What is it?
• Use of real media conventions involves consideration of other texts that you looked at and how skillfully you were able to weave their conventions into your work or ways in which you might have challenged them.
Creativity
What is it?
• Creativity is the hardest one in many ways because it involves thinking about what the creative process might mean.
• Wikipedia describes it as "a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight."
• For your projects it might involve considering where ideas came from, how you worked collaboratively to share ideas, how you changed things or even how you used tools like the programs to achieve something imaginative.
But that’s my evaluation?!
• Most of these are the areas that you covered in the evaluation task.
• This time, you are putting together ideas from evaluations and standing a bit further back to look across your production work and reflecting on how you developed across the course.
• Feel free to acknowledge weaknesses and to reflect upon how you learned from them and how you overcame problems.
• It is not a place to be defensive about your work but to really reflect on it!
Questions to generate points for 1b - Audience
- Who are the audience for a music video and how is this measured?
- How may an active audience use a music video?
- What are audience expectations for a music video?
- What are the issues for music video and audience?
- How is audience for music video research and monitored?
Questions for 1b
1. “Mass media is ever-changing due to its constant challenging of expected representations” Discuss how you challenged or incorporated accepted representations in one of your production pieces.
2. “All Media texts have a narrative” Discuss how you utilised different approaches to narrative in one of your production pieces.
3. “No media is presents reality, it is a construction of reality through series of shared interpretation of signs.” Discuss how youincoporated different aspects of media language in one of your production pieces.
4. “The audience should feel like voyeurs. Their response is absolutely crucial.” Explain the methods you used to attract your audience.
5. Discuss how you incorporated narrative concepts in one of your production pieces.
6. “The visual look of a text is what defines its genre” Paying particular attention to visuals, explain how you incorporated genre expectations in one of your production pieces.
7. “There is no such thing as reality in representation – we see what the creator wants us to see.” Discuss how you created certain representations in one of your productions.
8. “The more frequently and fluently a medium is used, the more “transparent” or “invisible” to its users it tends to become” Explain how you incorporated messages about your chosen genre in one of your production pieces.
9. “If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.” Discuss ways and methods you used to communicate with your chosen audience.
10. Discuss how you combined media language with a marketable product in one of your productions.
11. “Treating individual texts as closed-off entities is a mistake as codes extend structures.” Explain how you utilised intertextuality and media language in one of your production pieces.
12. “It’s is not the genre that defines a text but the medium of expression chosen by that text.” Discuss how you approached the conventions of your chosen genre in one of your production pieces.
2. “All Media texts have a narrative” Discuss how you utilised different approaches to narrative in one of your production pieces.
3. “No media is presents reality, it is a construction of reality through series of shared interpretation of signs.” Discuss how youincoporated different aspects of media language in one of your production pieces.
4. “The audience should feel like voyeurs. Their response is absolutely crucial.” Explain the methods you used to attract your audience.
5. Discuss how you incorporated narrative concepts in one of your production pieces.
6. “The visual look of a text is what defines its genre” Paying particular attention to visuals, explain how you incorporated genre expectations in one of your production pieces.
7. “There is no such thing as reality in representation – we see what the creator wants us to see.” Discuss how you created certain representations in one of your productions.
8. “The more frequently and fluently a medium is used, the more “transparent” or “invisible” to its users it tends to become” Explain how you incorporated messages about your chosen genre in one of your production pieces.
9. “If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.” Discuss ways and methods you used to communicate with your chosen audience.
10. Discuss how you combined media language with a marketable product in one of your productions.
11. “Treating individual texts as closed-off entities is a mistake as codes extend structures.” Explain how you utilised intertextuality and media language in one of your production pieces.
12. “It’s is not the genre that defines a text but the medium of expression chosen by that text.” Discuss how you approached the conventions of your chosen genre in one of your production pieces.
Examiner's Report 1a
1(a)
Whilst Candidates were typically able to discuss research in general terms, there was a distinction between those that could focus in on the precise ways in which their work was influenced by or responded to specific media texts/products and those that dealt with research and planning in a less applied and relevant manner (to the question set). Candidates in the latter category were restricted to levels 1 or 2 for use of examples. Terminology was utilised with variable conviction also – the stronger answers used appropriate theoretical or technical language to explain how creative decisions were informed by research into real media at the micro level.
Candidates are advised against the ‘scattergun’ approach – merely listing every instance of research and planning. They are also urged to be clear about the outcomes of research – reporting that they used YouTube to watch trailers, for example, is not sufficient for credit at A2. The words ‘informed by’ in the question were important. Evaluation/critical reflection is required here and the question demands explanation. Many Candidates provided description only – Centres should share the wording of the mark scheme as well as this report with Candidates ahead of the next series.
Equally, progression is an important part of this section and this was another neglected element. The higher level answers were able to synthesise all of these aspects – specific examples with emphasis on the outcome of the research in relation to creative decisions; critical reflection on the process of the research; and an awareness of progress made from AS to A2 and with reference to other media production work where relevant – the distance travelled.
Stronger Candidates were able to provide a broader answer they dealt with genre conventions along with a number of other aspects of real media texts, including narrative, media language and more technical and institutional/professional areas of media production related to several of their own productions.
Finally, it is important that Candidates can be specific and informed about real media conventions but there are a range of ways of relating their own work to real media – these might be more institutional. For example the institutional information in magazine contents pages or the title sequence of a film – these are equally conventional to the more genre ingredients examples that proliferated in answers. Or they might be more technical – observing industry practice in a particular medium.
Whilst Candidates were typically able to discuss research in general terms, there was a distinction between those that could focus in on the precise ways in which their work was influenced by or responded to specific media texts/products and those that dealt with research and planning in a less applied and relevant manner (to the question set). Candidates in the latter category were restricted to levels 1 or 2 for use of examples. Terminology was utilised with variable conviction also – the stronger answers used appropriate theoretical or technical language to explain how creative decisions were informed by research into real media at the micro level.
Candidates are advised against the ‘scattergun’ approach – merely listing every instance of research and planning. They are also urged to be clear about the outcomes of research – reporting that they used YouTube to watch trailers, for example, is not sufficient for credit at A2. The words ‘informed by’ in the question were important. Evaluation/critical reflection is required here and the question demands explanation. Many Candidates provided description only – Centres should share the wording of the mark scheme as well as this report with Candidates ahead of the next series.
Equally, progression is an important part of this section and this was another neglected element. The higher level answers were able to synthesise all of these aspects – specific examples with emphasis on the outcome of the research in relation to creative decisions; critical reflection on the process of the research; and an awareness of progress made from AS to A2 and with reference to other media production work where relevant – the distance travelled.
Stronger Candidates were able to provide a broader answer they dealt with genre conventions along with a number of other aspects of real media texts, including narrative, media language and more technical and institutional/professional areas of media production related to several of their own productions.
Finally, it is important that Candidates can be specific and informed about real media conventions but there are a range of ways of relating their own work to real media – these might be more institutional. For example the institutional information in magazine contents pages or the title sequence of a film – these are equally conventional to the more genre ingredients examples that proliferated in answers. Or they might be more technical – observing industry practice in a particular medium.
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