Music Industry - Theory: Audiences

Richard Dyer's Star Theory applied to Pop Stars

The terms "pop performer" and "pop star" have become interchangeable — strictly speaking, in media terms they are not the same thing. The study of stars as media texts/components of media texts demands that the distinction be made between those who are simply known for performing pop music and those who are known for being pop stars, who have an identity or persona which is not restricted solely to their musicianship.

One of the reasons so many pop performers are described as pop stars is that they are quickly promoted to this status by their management. This is easily done courtesy of a few judiciously placed stories, a famous boyfriend/girlfriend, attendance at premieres/parties and a feature in HEAT magazine. It can be easy to forget about the music in the light of the outfits or love affairs. There are some who appear to leapfrog the performer stage entirely, but they do have to go through it.

David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust star persona - still a recognizable icon 40 years later

HOWEVER, a true pop star does have a lasting significance, and has "brand awareness" among a wider market over a period of time. Many of the so-called pop stars populating the top forty currently have not made a sufficient sociological or cultural impact to be classified as true stars if we return to Richard Dyers’ definition. They will be forgotten by all but their most avid fans within a few years.

Stars as Constructions

Stars are constructed, artificial images, even if they are represented as being "real people", experiencing real emotions etc. It helps if their image contains a USP — they can be copied and/or parodied because of it. Their representation may be metonymic — Madonna's conical bra in the early 1990s, Bono's 'Fly' sunglasses, Britney's belly, Justin Bieber's bangs. Pop stars have the advantage over film stars in that their constructed image may be much more consistent over a period of time, and is not dependent on the creative input of others (e.g. screenwriters writing their lines).

Dyer proposes that:A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect offiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music]).

Yet that construction process is neither automatic nor fully understood. Record companies think they know about it — but witness the number of failures on their books. TV programmes such as The X Factor show us the supposed construction process, how an ordinary person is groomed, styled and coached into fulfilling a set of record company and market expectations.This is not true stardom, which must happen through a combination of factors. None of them labelled 'X'.

Imagine showing us 15 years ago to Simon Cowell! That's the problem with Pop Idol. They're auditioning cabaret singers. It's not pop music. It's Batley Variety Club.”

The Pet Shop Boys, quoted in Q, March 2002

“[Cowell is a] dreadful piece of crap who drags the music business down whenever he rears his ugly head... Pop stars today have no longevity. Rock 'n' roll is not about singing perfect notes or being a showbiz personality. It's about the anger and the angst. I hate what Pop Idol has done to the business.”

— Roger Daltrey [of The Who], ibid

As a record buying public, we prefer to believe in stars who are their own and our constructions rather than a transparent offering designed explicitly to appeal to our blander tastebuds served up by a record company interested only in our wallets.

Industry and Audience

Stars are manufactured by the music industry to serve a purpose — to make money out of audiences, who respond to various elements of a star persona by buying records and becoming fans. Stars are the cogs around which a plethora of record company gears find themselves turning. 
Record companies nurture and shape their stars — as the TV talent show processes have shown us. They tend to manufacture what they think audiences want, hence the 'photocopied' nature of many boy bands, teen bands etc.However, there are whole markets out there who are not convinced by the hype and don't want to spend their money on blandness.
The record industry also has a duty to provide bands/artists who are perceived as 'real' (for 'real, maybe read 'ugly' or unpolished) for these audiences.Stars can also be created by this route. Pop stars, whatever their nature, are quite clearly the product of their record company — and they must be sold.

Dyer says:

Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings.

The music industry is well aware of the range of audiences it caters to, the perky pre-school Tweenie fan to the ageing hippy, and it does its best to keep us all happy. Historically, the industry has provided us with a range of commodities all with different appeal. One way to achieve this is by producing new stars of different types playing constantly mutating genres of music - there's always something and someone fresh to choose from (important for the younger audience). Another way is to produce a star with long-lasting appeal, who, once their brand is established, can cater to a fan audience for decades (in the way U2 or the Rolling Stones have done).

Unfortunately, these methods are oppositional. The 'conveyor belt' approach to new stars means that talent isn't developed, and a star's value may be very short-lived. A star may only be significant or relevant for two years, or two albums. Too much focus on 'golden oldies' means that younger fans can't identify with stars, whom they see as belonging to their parents' generation. A healthy music industry develops both types of talent, and generates a diverse range of stars, who mean different things to different audience segments. Many pundits who say that the music industry is in the doldrums claim it is because this range of meanings is absent, or because the meaning of the modern star is superficial and transient.

Ideology & Culture

Stars represent shared cultural values and attitudes, and promote a certain ideology. Audience interest in these values enhances their 'star quality', and it is through conveying beliefs ideas and opinions outside music that performers help create their star persona. A star may initiate a fashion trend, with legions of fans copying their hairstyle and clothing. Stars initiate or benefit from cultural discourse (e.g. via their Twitter feed), and create an ongoing critical commentary. Now more than ever before, social networks give pop stars the opportunity to establish their own values outside their music. Lady Gaga tweets frequently about LGBT issues, and expects her Little Monsters to engage with that discourse just as much as she expects them to listen to her music.

Stardom, and star worship in general is a cultural value in itself. Ideologies drawn upon include materialism and sexuality. Whole sites of institutional support (eg radio & TV shows, magazines, websites) are devoted to star scrutiny, and it seems we can never get enough information.

Stars also provide us with a focal point for our own cultural thinking — particularly to do with Youth & Sexuality.

Character & Personality

A star begins as a "real" human, possessing gender & race characteristics, and existing against a socio-historic background. The star transformation process turns them into a construct, but the construct has a foundation in the real.We tend to read them as not-entirely-fictional, as being are very much of their time and culture, the product of a particular generation. Stars provide audiences with a focus for ideas of 'what people are supposed to be like' (eg for women, thin/beautiful) - they may support hegemony by conforming to it (thin/beautiful) or providing difference (fat/still lovable).

Much of the discussion of stars in celebrity magazines is about how stars compare to the current hegemonic ideal, and how we compare to the stars.

Dyer says

In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society.There is a good deal at stake in such conceptions. On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social group/class/gender to which they belong. This individualising stress involves a separation of the person's "self" from his/her social "roles", and hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of behaviour are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups would now wish to contest (eg the struggles over representation of blacks, women and gays in recent years).Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.

Richard Dyer — The Stars (BFI Education 1979)

Film stars are represented primarily through their roles — written by faceless screenwriters. The personality and characteristics making them similar/different are created for them by others, and their overall image is constructed from many fragmented parts, which may or may not contradict each other. They may indeed represent a perceived appropriate norm of behaviour but it takes several similar movies to create this effect.Film stars may survive individual flops — there are always other movies in the can — and embody several different values simultaneously. It's more difficult if you're in the music industry.

Pop stars, on the other hand, establish their character and personality through songs and performance and will strive for immediate star identity with a first album. They appear to have more control over their persona in that many of them write their own songs, and that their body of work develops, chronologically over time, along with society. Pop stars don't do aberrant costume dramas or science fiction movies which take them out of place in time and space and confuse their audience. They produce 45-74 minutes of music which gives a clear indication of their interests, moods, appetites and lifestyle at a particular point in time; audiences read music=person, and will base their understanding of the star's persona on the sentiments expressed by their songs. This understanding may be very personal and intimate, the star's music can infiltrate every corner of a fan's life. Albums are continually read and re-read as texts think of the 100+ times you might listen to a track, whereas films tend to be watched once or twice only.

Because a pop star's persona is constructed on the basis of a narrow text, continually re-read and reassessed, this may lead, in many cases, to second album syndrome, when an artist is unable to sustain their persona over a period of time (largely because they got rich off the back of the first album and bought all the houses cars etc they'd ever wanted) and they are unable to create a consistent account of their character and personality in their second major release.The rootspring of their persona then disappears, or becomes confused.

A pop star's persona, therefore, as depicted in terms of character and personality, is a fragile thing which needs constant nurturing, and is the product of constant discourse between the star and his or her audience.

Music Industry - Narrative: Video analysis sheet.

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS SHEET

Task 1 

Use a grid like the ones below to analyse your chosen music video. Remember you need to analyse how shot types, camerawork, Mise en Scene, editing, intertextuality and representation are used to make the video appeal to the target audience. Don’t describe what you see, analyse how it’s being presented to you.
Take screenshots from the video to illustrate your analysis and use a website like www.lyrics.com to find the lyrics. Write the lyric that matches the screenshot below it. If it’s a musical break then describe it, for
example, ‘Drum solo and guitar feedback’. In the section called ‘Shot type and movement’ describe what the frame is and if the camera is still or moving then analyse the effect of this. In the box labelled ‘analysis’ you need to look at everything you see in the screenshot and talk about why it’s there and how it appeals to an audience.
For the box marked ‘Edits’ you should note what sort of edit or transition is used.
There’s an example below.

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS Rolo Tomassi – Party Wounds

	SHOT TYPE AND MOVEMENT: Tracking shot shows whole room in long shot but over the shoulder mid-shot of the drummer makes audience feel part of the band.	Analysis
		The LS shows the instruments which suggest a rock genre. This is supported by the clothing of the band and audience. There’s no distance or separation between these two either which connotes a closeness which would appeal to an indie/rock audience. The location is the hall seen in the establishing shot and is decorated in a sparse way, this supports the stripped down and uncomplicated music. The lighting is also muted and the colours are limited giving a smoky look like the sort of live venue this audience understands. There’s an element of intertextuality in that it looks similar to the video for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, a favourite of this target audience.
	MUSIC/LYRICS ‘Smashed glass proceedings, wide open party wounds’	EDIT: Cuts to next shot at the end of the tracking shot, quite aggressive which matches the music.

Remember – Don’t just describe. You need to analyse the effect it has too. Always try and link it back to how it appeals to audience.

Shot	Shot types and camera movement	ANALYSIS
	Music/lyrics	Edit/transitions

Music Industry - Organisations: Promotional Posters

Analysis of a Music Poster with task

Analysing a music_poster from ealeya

Music Industry - Promotion: Star Image Motifs

Star Image Motifs are logos, or are a similar running theme that an artist uses across their promotional work such as CD covers, websites, promotional posters, t-shirts, tickets etc. 

Artists use these so that they can be instantly recognisable to their target audience and become more memorable. It builds on the idea of a brand and is favoured by consumers who can identify with the artist and that genre.

'NDubz' use this graffiti-style font. It indicates their grime/ hip-hop genre and is used to attract a mainly young audience who would find the anti social nature of graffiti appealing.

'Eminem' always has his name in capitals with one of the 'E''s back to front, suggesting he is a strong and original thinking artist: You need to deconstruct star image motifs and consider how the target audience is being positioned.

Katy Perry' always uses the same bubblegum-style font. This ties in with the style of her music, not too deep, and would primarily appeal to girls although a lot of her promotional artwork has been created for a male target audience. 

Katy Perry's brand colour seems to be pink; her name, website, advertisements and videos contain an abundance of this colour.

For example; 'California gurls' contains lots of pink, as do her album, website, makeup and costumes.

Lily Allen also gives great consideration to her star image motif. Her website has a fawn colour on the background as does her album cover. This is a more sophisticated approach which suggests Lily may want to retain the audience that followed her when she was younger. She could be saying, we're growing up together. The lyrics of her songs are also possibly aimed at a more mature audience.

Star Image Motifs can often be said represent or have wider connotations; for example, Lily Allen's change in colour theme to a paler, less bright colour could represent her personality shift as her lyrics and music develop now that she is venturing into motherhood.

Similarly, since her marriage to Russel Brand, Katy Perry's songs have been less about being promiscuous or unsure about relationships, such as 'Hot n Cold' and 'I kissed a girl', to about being in love. 'Peacock' and 'Teenage Dream' demonstrate this.

Due to the change in songs, the promotion has to change and therefore so does the star image motif.

It is not unusual for artists to change their star image motif as they develop and try to keep a freshness to their brand, such as Blink 182....

Task: If your first textual investigation is about a musician or band, then write 200 words on their star image motif. Consider how their brand targets a particular target audience.

If you are not dealing with a music based text then you should research and analyse the star image motif of one of the following bands: Consider how their brand targets a particular target audience.

De La Soul:

Oasis:

Bob Marley and the Wailers:

Music Industry and Convergance

Key words:

Genre:
This means type in music, different genres include heavy metal, RnB, soul, Punk, etc

Convergent:
When more than one media area come together, often in a business relationship.
For example, comics and television. In this case, records and music videos.

Conventions:
The typical characteristics of a particular type of text.

Connotation:
The hidden meaning behind an image, word or sound that gives it depth.

Pop Music and Youth Culture

In the decade after the second world war, young people wanted to see themselves as very different to their parents. Boys dressed in drape suits and ripped up cinema seats when the film Rock Around the Clock was screened. Girls combed their hair into beehives and wore high stiletto heels.

Teenagers in the 1950's were and still are often presented by the media as unruly and violent.
When Mods and Rockers fought each other in 1964, many newspapers treated the incident as though war had broken out.As though society was on the verge of breakdown.

The young people who were tried for the offences were described as miserable specimens, louts, dregs and long haired, mentally unstable, petty hoodlums.

While the press presented a negative view of teenagers, the music and fashion industries soon realised that there was a lot of money to be made from them.
they were a new, young audience who had money to spend on enjoying themselves. When it came to records and record players in 1960, teenagers made up half of the market.
In 1955, British listeners bought 4 million singles on record.
By 1963 the amount of singles bought had risen to 61 million.

This wasn't only due to the popularity of singers like Elvis Presley but mostly,it was down to the fact that radio was now broadcasting music and was becoming hugely popular.

Genre became an important part of the record industry. To keep sales soaring, it was good to have new teenage crazes - different genres - appearing regularly. If different fashion styles could be linked to music genres,then even more money would go through the tills.

Genres are important in music for the same reasons that they are important in other parts of the media.

• They help audiences to recognise things which they think they might like.
• They help the music industry to organise the things they want to sell to the audience.

An obvious way to see this in action is to hit the genre link on an iPod-iTunes will have given everything a genre. You can listen to indie music playlists without rock music intruding.

Another way to see genre being used is to go into any music retail store. The products are all arranged into categories; jazz, rock, dance, hip hop and so on.

Music Videos

Rock and Roll music in the 50's signaled the the start of a new age of music film. These films were made cheaply and quickly to cash in on the latest fashion, so most of them were very forgettable. Rock Around the Clock though featured the music of Bill Haley and it captured the imagination of the newly named teenagers in Europe and USA.

In the 1960's, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were major international stars and they began to make promotional videos which could be screened on television while they were away touring. These were mostly films of the bands miming their songs but, in 1964, The Beatles produced a documentary called A Hard Days Night. The film is a mix of songs and comedy and was a precursor to the music video as we know it today.

                           

Task 1:
Research the history of the music video and produce a timeline that shows all the major milestones between 1940 and today.

Music Industry - Genre Conventions of R&B: Artwork and Video

Textual Investigation: 

 Conventions of RnB.

F A S H I O N. MEN:

Topless – For example Trey Songz (see below) is usually pictured in his videos with very minimal clothes on; this is because a lot of male RnB singers target market is young teenage girls.

Jeans – If the artist is pictured topless they are usually wearing jeans, slightly hanging low so you can see their boxers. They will also have a designer belt on which a few close up shots will be done on as a form of advertising for that particular item.

Tattoos – A lot of RnB male artists have tattoos a majority of the time they are on their chest if not it will be on their arms. They also have multiple tattoos, it will not just be one.

Jewellery – Unlike males in hip hop, RnB stars wear subtle jewellery like a watch, chain and earring – where as in hip hop they would wear bundles of jewellery.

F A S H I O N. WOMEN:

Minimal clothing – women in R&B usually have very little clothing on and their stomachs are on show a majority of the time; this is because to male fans they are meant to be seen as objects of desire.

Hair & Makeup – their hair is always styled in a very dramatic and eye catching way. Their makeup is also very bold and defined, especially their eyes they always have dark coloured eye shadows with gold's which makes their eyes very alluring. To show power some females wear red lipstick in their videos.

Heels – R&B females wear very high heels to elongate their legs because if they are wearing hardly any clothes the higher the shoes the longer their legs will look. However some R&B females wear trainers in their videos for choreographed scenes. 

Jewelry – Big earrings, necklaces but usually when they wear a lot of necklaces they are breaking gender stereotypes because it is usually R&B males that wear that much jewelry.

Poses: Often reclining with a direct mode of address. Looking straight out at the audience.

ICONOGRAPHY. MEN:

R&B videos are usually very sexual and the topless men in the male R&B videos connotes that sense of sexuality. A majority of R&B videos these days are filmed in grey scale/sepia tone which adds a sensual tone to the imagery in the video. R&B male stars wear jewelry however not as much as Hip Hop stars do because although they are trying to depict their wealth, a majority of the video will have close ups on their bodies and abs. 

Trey Songz – Can’t be friends:

Similar to males in the R&B genre, females in R&B also convey their sexuality through their clothing which is very minimal; they also place emphasis on their sexuality through their makeup. R&B females are usually portrayed as soft goddess type people in their videos, but more recently there has been a lot of gender stereotypes being broken in their videos with the females being seen as more powerful than men. Ciara's "like a boy” video.

 

• CHALLENGING STEREOTYPES:
• Recently, producers of videos are challenging gender stereotypes more and more, especially when dealing with  female R&B stars. In some videos females will be depicted in similar ways to males in their videos, conveying a message to the audience that the woman is a powerful person. This message is often conveyed through costume, because a change in the way women are dressed can make them seem powerful automatically – although the stereotypical image is black skimpy clothing .
• SLOW SONGS:
• Slow R&B songs that are often about being in love or breaking up. These kind of “love” songs are usually performed by females. Rather than wearing very minimal clothing, females in these songs will wear clothing that depict them in the same light as goddesses; the clothing will be bright and colourful to show happiness if the song is about being in love. 
• Whereas if the lyrics are about breaking up, the typical convention used is often a grey scale filter to show emotion and they will be wearing dark clothes. A lot of nude coloured/natural makeup will be used to convey the sense of natural beauty, because a lot of close ups of the artist's face will be included. Some of these types of songs have a narrative but some of them will just be shots of the artist. 
• A majority of the time the location for these songs will be a beach or a tropical island looking place (this will then mean a lot of wide shots showing the location) – especially if the video is a love song. 
• Songs about breaking up usually take place in a plain black room with  a chair or very minimal items in the room, because these songs tend to concentrate on the artist by using close ups to show significant facial expression and body language.
• FAST SONGS:
• Fast tempo-ed R&B songs by females usually involve them wearing bright colours, but it not about being in the club like the way the males depict themselves. A lot of videos by females are done in the studio because there are a lot of special effects especially in the background (for example: Rihanna – rude boy). 
• 
  
• The typical clothing for these type of videos are very revealing clothes with high heels to elongate legs, a lot of jewelry is worn as well where as in the slower songs, jewelry was kept to a minimum. Brightly coloured makeup is also worn, if it is not strong eye makeup it is usually very strong lip colours like reds and bright pinks. These videos do not tend to follow a narrative but will usually have a male co-star or also involve male dancers because there is usually a lot of dancing and choreography in these videos. These videos will also portray the musicians in a more powerful light although there is not a total gender switch up, they still seem more powerful than they do in videos for love songs.
• Regardless of where you view them, the purpose of music video is to promote a song. In your research, you should have come across Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. For those that remember this song it is impossible not to think about the heads in the video floating around the screen. Videos create a buzz around a song and help it get noticed. Then purchased.
• Some critics such as Andrew Goodwin, argue that music video changed the way we view moving image. Through MTV, the music video has moved away from the classic hollywood narrative structure; 3 acts with a start middle and end. So, if you start to analyse them using the same rules then they won't work.
• 
  
• Target Audience:
• A majority of R&B fans are teenagers/young adults roughly between the ages of 13-25. This could be because of the explicit lyrics in some of the songs, a majority of this age group are also females. 
• It is usually females that are attracted to R&B music because female R&B artists stereo-typically make songs about being in love or being heartbroken – this is something that will appeal greatly to teenage girls and young adults. 
• The fast paced R&B songs will also involve a lot of fashion and the synergy of music and fashion is something that will also attract females because if they are into that sort of music they are usually also interested in fashion.The target audience of R&B males is also majorly made up of females because they are portrayed in a very sexual way, through their nudity and lyrics. Females will find this appealing because usually they will also be physically attracted to the male artists. However some males will be attracted to the jewelry, naked women and depiction of wealth in these videos.

Task1: Rihanna's 2007 hit Umbrella was arguably the biggest selling song of 2007 in most countries around

 the world. Analyse the artwork and the video to see how both conform or challenge genre conventions of

 R&B. 200-300 words.

Music Industry-Genre Conventions

Genre, as you should well know by now, is the classification of a text according to its style and content, and possibly its form and manner of production. Of all the different media, pop music is the one most dependent on genre, and which includes the most wildly different genres of texts. Genres are continually being invented, crossed and revisited, and the process of categorisation is an important one for the producers and fans of the music alike. Some of these categorisations are just wordplay (see above) and others carry with them a complex set of definitions that are rigidly enforced by aficionados (the sub genres of house music being a good example - never ask a DJ).

Broadly speaking, most music falls into one of these categories:

Pop (including global categories like Europop, Arabic pop, Cantopop, J-Pop and K-Pop)

Dance

R&B

Hip-Hop/Rap

Rock

Punk

Country & Western

Folk

Jazz

Blues

Latin

Gospel

Reggae

New Age

Each of these categories contains a myriad of sub-genres, and there are plenty of hybrids and mash-ups. 

However, each of these genres has unique musical characteristics (rhythm, instruments used for melody, lyric and vocal style), and can be associated with other factors, such as clothing, hair and lifestyle. 

Each genre has specific sites of institutional support, including performance spaces (e.g. nightclubs), radio stations, specialist record shops, magazines and festivals.

Image is a key paradigm for music genre, with an artist's look categorising them before they start singing or playing. For an artist or band to truly fit a genre category, they must be represented as doing so visually, on record sleeves, publicity photos and in music videos.

Look can be as generic as sound: it is difficult to distinguish between many hip hop videos, all featuring baggily dressed homeboys sitting on steps or porches outside houses in a generic 'hood, swinging their arms and smiling at the booty passing by. Or perhaps driving slowly in big old open-topped cars round a generic 'hood, swinging their arms and waving at the booty they pass by. Similarly, all-girl or all-boy groups tend to go for videos shot in some warehouse, or other self-consciously urban setting, featuring them dancing in formation. If the look fits, wear it.

Adele, whose music draws from classic pop styles of the 1960s and 1970s, is often photographed wearing classic, retro clothing that associates her with her role models Aretha Franklin or Dusty Springfield and suggests she is a serious, soulful artiste in old school mode. 

Lady Sovereign, on the other hand, identifies with her genre of music through an outsize baseball cap, wacky sunglasses and neon colors.

Genre and Sales

As well as publishing overall sales figures, the Billboard chart (calculated from sales, streaming and radio play) is subdivided into no less than 43 different music genre categories.

Genre has always been a cornerstone of music retail because customers often restrict themselves to a certain style of music (eg hiphop, R'n'B) and are not interested in buying outside that genre. Go into your local HMV and look at how the whole store is organised along genre principles. Although many artists resent being pigeonholed into a particular genre niche in this way, there is little doubt that retailers and customers rely heavily on genre to make their buying choices. Music streaming services (like Pandora or Spotify) rely on your past genre choices in order to keep playing you new music that you may be interested in buying.