Internet

Just some general musings on the Internet.

Recently discovered this myspace page which caught my eye

www.myspace.com/larouxuk

The artist has used Myspace as a platform to create quite a distinctive page. Myspace is generally seen as the music artists way of getting attention, and is successful. Lily Allen for example built up a significant following on her Myspace to help launch her career before getting signed to a major record label. However, many of these pages can be formulaic; good for uploading songs and pictures and networking but lacking originality. La Roux have used Myspace to build their own website. The video at the top is unusual and changes the normal layout, grabbing the attention of the audience immediately, although the video does need to buffer occasionally on slower internet connections. There is also the 'touch it' box, which is a clever interactive way of getting the audience to engage with the page and not just click on to the next. This is something I learned about in the What is Visual Communication brief. 

YouTube is another platform used by artists and labels to promote their music. Recently Universal Music Group have begun to generate significant revenue as a result of users viewing the music videos of their artists. Having signed a groundbreaking deal with YouTube to split advertising revenues, they are reported to have made almost $100 million during 2008. Universals YouTube channel is the most viewed of all time, with 3.11 billion views! And the most viewed video of all time....? 

Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend'. Unsurprisingly, Lavigne is signed to Universal.

The video that's recently caught my eye is Coldplay's 'Life in Technicolour ii'. Firstly, because it's an unusual video for Coldplay, but secondly, and most interesting to me is that it is in HD. It's the first music video that I've come across in HD and is a sign of what is to come. However, I learned today during a conversation that the human eye cannot actually focus on film in HD as too much is in focus at any one time, and we are used to only looking at parts in focus whilst our mind perceives the rest. For example when we look at a person, only their eyes are in focus and we see the rest in our peripheral vision.