the changing context of music videos

How are contemporary media issues changing

‘the music video’?

Year 13 Media Academic WorkshopAutumn 2009

• Objective: to understand how changes in media audiences, institutions, technologies and texts are transforming music videos

• Outcome: Create a PowerPoint, uploaded to your blog, to show how and why music videos are changing

Mass Audience to Fragmented Audience

• Watch this (History Of Communication)• How has the way we consume media changed?• How has the media developed in a way that has

fragmented audiences? • How have media technologies changed us from

a passive mass audience to individual audiences (and, arguably, to active participators/ users)?

• What’s this got to do with music videos?

Changes in Music and Television

• Arguably, MTV has become more of a lifestyle channel, rather than a music video channel (My Sweet Sixteen)

• Increase in niche channels (MTV Base; channels of Indian music videos; rock music videos on Scuzz; ‘indie’ music videos on NME channel)

• Multi-channel age– Audiences are increasingly fragmented– Audiences tend to shape their own ‘music video

channel’ via the Internet

• Music videos are the most viewed category on YouTube

• Watch this (Thriller)

• 33,734,018 views on YouTube

• Is this a music video?• What does this tell us about audience

consumption of music videos?

Proliferation of user-generated content; Rise of online video

Fan videos

• Watch this (Daft Hands)

• Audience-created fan videos for Daft Punk song ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’

• Search on YouTube – 100s of versions

• Facebook group

Fan videos – Daft Hands

• What does this tell us about the changing nature of audiences/ distribution/ music videos/ relationship between audiences and producers?

Media1.0 and Web1.0

Producer AudienceMedia texts

Traditional model of media communication, production and consumption

Unidirectional relationship between producer and audience

Producer Audience

Audience

Web 2.0 model of media communication, production and consumption

Media texts

AudienceAudience

Audience Audience

OR…?

Web2.0Web2.0 = sites of user-generated content (e.g. YouTube/ Flickr) and the consequential shift in relationship between producer and audience.

From ‘audience’ to users/ prosumers/ producers/ prod-users

• This video cost $100 (Again and Again)

• What does this tell us about how music videos are changing?

‘Guerrilla’ Music Videos• Black Cab Sessions

– Film a performance in the back of a taxi (Fleet Foxes)

• Vincent Moon’s Takeaway Shows– Performances in unusual places, released

as mainstream music videos (REM, Arcade Fire)

• What has brought about these new forms of music video?

• What do these new videos suggest about how the music video industry is changing?

Radiohead video competition

• June 2008• Radiohead initially released no official

videos for songs from In Rainbows• Instead, competition for animated videos

for any of the songs on the album• Watch this (Radiohead competition)• What does this say about record labels/

music videos/ audiences/ the relationship between audiences and producers…?

Task

• Create a PowerPoint about the ways in which the music video is changing

• Upload to your blog

• Work must be completed today

• Visit cnsmusicvideo.blogspot.com for useful links, and instructions on uploading work a PowerPoint to your blog

Title: How are contemporary media issues changing ‘the music video’? Consider issues such as: • Fragmented audiences (in the multi-channel, online-video media

age, we are no longer a ‘mass audience’)• Re-Alignment/ branding of MTV as a lifestyle channel (rather than a

music TV channel)• Decline of traditional broadcasting • User-generated content • Video on demand• Web2.0• Audiences have become users/ producers/ prosumers/ prod-users…• Fan-videos• Proliferation of videos for unsigned bands• Rise of online video• Decline of record labels (and budgets)• More direct relationship between audience and band