TITLE: Where have all the good bands gone?
Survival of the fittest in the music industry
Abstract
There is no doubt that the music industry is completely different in all respects than it was at its inception and even at its peak in the 1970’s. Record labels especially have changed the most and now many are failing, but why? What caused the steady recession in the industry over the last 10 years? A lot of fingers are pointed, mostly at illegal digital music pirating among other things, but the explanation cannot be reduced to singular causes. After comparing the business model of the modern popular music label to earlier versions, the evolution makes it clear that changed ideologies about music and business practices within the industry have vastly contributed to its current downfall.
Methodology
Over commercialization, over emphasis on the singles market, and a serious lack of artist development are the main factors causing the recession.
The first step is to introduce the reader to how the music industry operates. A basic knowledge of the industry will help greatly in explaining my point. Then I would probably have to show the reader how the old industry worked (probably during the time of its greatest success) and compare those practices to today’s practices. To make the point even more clear I want to have many points of view about the situation, because in this field your opinion of how things work changes dramatically depending on what side you are on. I need to solidify the way the information works but I have a general idea.
Media and Justification
The problem I am facing right now is the “why multimedia?” question. This topic seems like I can just as well write an essay, but my justification goes a little like this: I’m considering having an experiential game element run throughout my project in which the reader ‘takes part’ in different fields of the music industry. The reason the industry has evolved the way it has is because of the choices people have made, so I want the reader to experience those same choices and experience the outcome in their ‘music industry.’ The whole project would be a combination of these explorative game sections combined with interviews in a documentary style project. I feel people have many misconceptions about the industry’s inner-workings and I want to remedy that by giving them the information and relative perspectives.
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3 comments:
It sounds like your audience is composed of laymen moreso than professionals in the music industry. Are you going to suggest an action people can take to end the recession, such as using their consumer purchasing power or not downloading illegal digital music?
As for your problem with "Media and Justification", a topic dealing with the music industry has a lot of room for the use of media. For example, you could add clips from music videos or interviews to compare the different ideologies, something you could not as effectively depict in a written essay. You could even have a short quiz or something interactive before and after your documentary section to help the user understand his misconceptions about the music industry. It might be interesting if you could make the interface look like a LimeWire setup or something, and after they answer each question, the percent-downloaded bar gets a little larger.
I like tiffany's suggestion of interface...a limewire type interface might work really well with what you're attempting.
In terms of multimedia, since it sounds like you want to approach this multi-perspectivally(is that a word?), you could visually give the project more than one perspective. The audience can have a choice, whether they want to be the artist or the label, for example. If they are the artist, you can have the view from on stage, or have a manager talking to the screen, offering them a new deal. Before they are allowed to make a decision, you can give them some brief reading to do, such as the history of other bands who have made similar decisions, as well as your own "expert" opinion. The goal of the game in the end, whether you are the band, the singer, the manager, or the label, is to keep yourself alive...
Those game suggestions of "keeping your band alive" sound pretty cool.
Hopefully, you can somehow make the experience different for the user every time. Since a lot of the music industry is based on luck (or at least it seems that way to me) it would be cool if that was reflected in the game. So, choosing the same decisions in your game won't always work out in the end the same way every time. This reflects the fact that a lot of bands may try the same methods of success, and it always doesn't work for all of them.
That will make the game more fun than if there was one right answer to all the questions, and one right way to navigate to be successful.
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