Key Company Case Study

Certain media conglomerates/companies have become so successful they can be considered absolutely essential in determining how profitable an artist can become. With the popularity of the internet at its absolute peak, video sharing/viewing sites are paramount in an artists career. An example of this is Youtube.

What is Youtube?
YouTube is a website specifically created for the uploading/sharing/consumption of videos. It acts a distribution platform for content creators and advertisements. One popular form of videos to be uploaded to the site is music videos. Music videos generate billions of views and revenue which created profits for the artist and the site itself.

When was YouTube created?

The site was founded on February 14th 2005 by: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Here is the first ever video uploaded to YouTube featuring one of the creators (Jawed Karim) which has over 19 million views today.

Music videos on YouTube

Since the website was founded, artists/musicians from all around the world have been using the site to upload their music whether it be simple audio tracks, lyric videos or music videos. Successful artists can gain millions or even billions of views on their music videos which generates a huge amount of popularity and profit for the artist/record label. For example: Beyonce, Paramore, Psy and 

Michael Jackson.

 In some cases, artists careers can be formed on the site which can lead to become huge successes purely because they gained large amounts of views which lead to them being recognised by record labels. Perhaps the most known example of this is Justin Bieber. 

Advantages/Disadvantages

There are many obvious advantages to uploading content as an artist/producer or prosumer such as:

1. The site allows you to distribute your product to a possibly huge audience easily. 
2. There is a possibility you can generate a large amount of money/profit from putting your product on the site through advertisements and revenue.
3. By opening up yourself to a larger audience it can lead to more opportunities, for example in recent times the integration between YouTube and the television industry. 

However there are also some disadvantages to distributing your product on this site: 

1. There are increased chances of cyber bullying, specifically on the internet a popular form of this is known as "trolling" 
2. Accessing the target audience may appear very difficult 
3. The extreme competition between other creators can become intense at reaching the target audience 

Genre Conventions

Genre: Country
Within the large genre of 'country' there are many subgenres, for example: alternative country, country gospel and honky tonk, bluegrass and more...

Country pop is perhaps the most listened to subgenre of country today. It's a mixture of country and hip hop. Examples of the modern artists who are in this genre are: Taylor Swift and Jessica Simpson... Pop country artists will be classified under this subgenre if their songs cross over and make it into the top 40 radio lists available.

Bluegrass is a combination of: country music, jazz, ragtime and traditional music. Typical sounds that are associated with this genre are:

• fiddles
• guitars
• drums
• banjo
• vocals
• harmonicas

An example of a famous bluegrass artist is Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton is the most honoured female country artist of all time. She has had 25 songs reach no.1 on the Billboard country charts which is a record for a female artist. Parton has also received countless awards for her music including 8 Grammy Awards.

Information on the music genre country was gathered from this source which lists a large amount of genre in music ever created.

Company Logo- Graphic Design Idea

I decided to recreate the company logo for "Throne Cinema" using Photoshop CC to experiment and eventually making a new logo using triangle print/ mosaic design. This involved more work within the layers of photoshop and rotation, use of filters on those layers etc..

This logo originally started life as 3 different layers that were manipulated and with the addition of pixelation and filters used created the triangle background. 

This photo shows the 3 different photos being grouped together to form the background layer that would then be duplicated twice to allow for the filters to be added.

In this image it shows the background being formed with the mosaic/triangular design. The circles visible in the background were removed by adding a filter on top and lowering the opacity. The font was then added along with the black triangle which had a lighting effect of "hue" placed on it to match the background, which ultimately lead to the creation of the first photo. 

Music Video Regulation

Who regulates music videos?
Certain organisations are in operation across the world, and more specifically the UK to regulate the imagery, lyrics and generally music videos that are shown to the potential audience (which may be on television or on sites such as YouTube). If these organisations feel that a particular music video is inappropriate in some fashion for the audience they may: either remove the video completely, have the artist re-create a more appropriate video, or not show the video on television before the watershed at 9pm in the UK.

One example of this organisations in the UK is the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) they are held responsible to pilot voluntary age ratings for online music videos. Another company that is in charge of music video regulations being broadcasted on television for the UK is 'Ofcom'

Examples of banned music videos

Some music videos created by artists, producers etc may be so explicit that they can be banned completely from being shown on television or hosting sites such as YouTube. However this in most cases increases the popularity of the song and sales, which is the opposite of the organisations aim.

An example of a video that was banned off of YouTube for its explicit content and the sexualisation of women in the video is Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines". However after a certain period, YouTube re-uploaded the uncensored version which has resulted in millions of views.

Another example of a banned music video is the Prodigy's "Smack My B**** Up". The video and song title were considered so bad its name wasn't said in the charts when it was released in 1997. The video was obviously banned due to featuring: sex scenes, drug abuse and violence.

Changes in standards

Over the years and development in music videos and what genres have become mainstream, the audiences' taste has also changed and therefore our standards have become more open-minded. What may be seen as completely unacceptable and could have been banned, may not even seem a little unusual to the younger generation in today's society. For instance, the sexualisation of women in music videos, scenes depicting sexual imagery in music videos created years ago that were banned or censored, most likely would be shown on television now without those regulations put in place.

Difficulties of implementation of regulations

The obvious difficulties of regulations is that once a music video has become popular and banned for specific reasons, the demand for that song increases so much that organisations/sites may crumble under the demand and pressure from the audience, which will lose them profit if the product isn't provided for them at all. For example the video to Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" was banned and then uploaded due to the demand for that music video. This shows that its very difficult to balance censorship to protect the vulnerable audience members and to keep the audience happy in general by supplying them with products they demand and want to see.