Tuesday 7 January 2014

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.


















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