“The Noughties - A MySpace Generation”
Treatment
During the noughties we saw the introduction of social networking and digital downloads. the way in which we discover, purchase and listen to music has altered dramatically in the past decade.
Set in Maidstone, the general public will be approached one by one in a sequence down a busy high street and asked questions relating to their music buying habits: how do they discover music and where do they get it from. I hope to demonstrate how the consumer has changed and the variations between different generations. I expect to find that audiences have become used to new technologies offering personalisation, on-demand content and portability. They have become more selective in what they listen to from services such as iTunes; launched in 2003.
I want to guide the audience through the decade with a narrator and archive footage of popular bands who have gained success through social networking: for example, Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys and Kate Nash. I want to compare and contrast these acts with a local band to show to upside and the downside to social networking and digital downloads in the noughties.
The town of Maidstone, full of lively pubs and bars, is where you will find my central characters: a band called My Last Mistake. I plan on introducing them by hearing their music play non-diegetic in one scene before cutting to a live music sequence of them playing the song diegetic in a new scene. We will interview the lead singer, Leah Newcombe, in her home subjectively, and show archive footage of the band in the early stages and find out how she felt at the time, what she planned for the future, how MySpace helped her and the struggles she faced as an artist.
In the noughties, Leah started the band as a solo act, just herself and a guitar. Through uploading her songs to MySpace , a social-networking site, she became a hit with the young music scene, the “emo”, particularly in the U.S.. Because of her popularity, she was discovered by Universal and signed a publishing deal with them; She released her debut album (recorded and produced by the same people who worked with “Alexisonfire”) and sold over 5,000 copies of her E.P. through MySpace. In just over a year alone, she had over 4.7 million plays on MySpace. At the time, she had planned a tour of U.S. and Canada during 2009. She added two more band members: Amber on drums and Richard on guitar. We see how My Last Mistake were in the right place at the right time: on MySpace, where a revolution was happening.
An industry expert, such as a university lecturer or a writer, is interviewed in their place of work to inform the audience how the industry has changed and how it faced a period of file-sharing. In 2008, the largest academic survey of young people’s music ownership found that teenagers and students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players as a result of file sharing websites such as Napster, Limewire and Pirate Bay. I will look back at the interviews with the public to discover where their music came from on their music players and whether they own songs from such websites.
Using facts and figures, the expert will show how music sales have been falling steadily; therefore, large companies became desperate to promote subscription-based agreements, whereby the user pays a monthly fee for music, rather than rely on one-off CD and download sales. For example, record labels EMI and Warner Music together launched the Datz Music Lounge in 2008, subscribers could access unlimited songs for a year and keep all the songs they download forever for £99.99.
These are the conflicts artists face, music had become so easily available for free. I plan on filming My Last Mistake, on location in a studio and provoking them in a cinema verite style to share their personal views on the subject and reveal any tensions they have. An issue they will talk about is the increasing amount of artists swarming the internet on networking sites, and it becomes more difficult to stand out. They will also talk about the end of MySpace and the move to Facebook as it became more popular in 2008. We explore how the band use the internet as a promotional tool and how bands are forced to give away tracks for free so they are open to viral and peer-to-peer marketing from file-sharing. The downside for artists is the costs and time of producing a song to be given away freely. Some indie bands embrace file-sharing as a tool for great exposure as opposed to anti-piracy artists such as Prince and Metallica. I will explore the stance My Last Mistake takes on the subject and possibly bring in the previous interviews with the public on their views.
Leah now works in website graphic design, a skill she found when designing her MySpace page. She has completed courses in Modern and Contemporary Music and Professional Musicianship. As we reach a climax, we follow My Last Mistake to a gig, where they play once more. A threat to the character’s journey is to experience an unsuccessful gig, highlighting the tough times of the music industry and promotion difficulties online trying to grab people’s attention. There is an opportunity to provoke the band to talk to local people at the venue and observe their conversations and reactions to tell the story. Or, the night could be a success and a turning point for the central characters, they have taken a journey and their motives for the future have changed.
Ultimately, I aim to inform a wide audience of the Yesterday channel the important changes that have occurred in the past decade in the music industry with social networking. I want the audience to reminisce and to look forward and understand the industry in a different light. I want them to understand the struggles artists face against TV Talent Shows such as The X Factor, which dominates the music charts.
This film should be commissioned because it’s new, informative, exciting, stylish and the characters are interesting, original and a unique selling point for the documentary. I have worked closely with musicians and was one of the many young people flooding MySpace, Facebook and social networking sites and exploring their uses; I was also finding and buying music online. I have a passion for music discovery and watching talented musicians fight into a tough industry to be noticed and successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment