Music Industry Links: Adele

Examples of marketing techniques by Adele and her Label. 

• Teased fans with a short into to 'Hello' - Adele had not released new music for three years since her second studio album, '21'. Fans were eagerly waiting for any news regarding her next big release. Adele very cleverly released a 30 second video of 'Hello' during The X Factor's ad break. It was simple and consisted of a black background with the lyrics to Hello's intro displayed in white. The video did not give away anything regarding Adele's comeback. As a result, social media was flooded with speculations on whether she was finally releasing her next album. The teaser built up a lot of anticipation and excitement among fans. 
• Released 'Hello' as a free single - To create buzz for her new album, '25', Adele released 'Hello' as a free single. She also refused to offer her album via streaming services such as Spotify and Apple music. By releasing the best song on the album for free, she built anticipation for the album. 'Hello' created a social media pandemic and fans were left longing to more music. '25' became a commercial success due to this simple, yet very effective strategy. According to Billboard, over 8 million album copies were sold in the U.S alone. 
• Partnered with prominent people to market her album - Adele won fans' hearts by participating in an impersonator contest soon after the album launch. She partnered with the BBC and Graham Norton to pull off the prank. The video ranked in over 40 million views on Youtube. She also partnered with Jimmy Fallon to perform 'Hello' with classroom instruments. The video became a huge success on Youtube with over 30 million views. Adele also appeared on popular TV shows such as 'Saturday Night Live' to promote her album. Tv appearances and partnerships with famous hosts, played a huge role in boosting Adele's album sales. 
• A song that spoke to her fanbase - 'Hello' spoke directly to the legions of fans who fell for Adele's focus on heartbreak and misery on '21', quickly bringing them back to centre. Only this time, the singers focus is tweaked with Adele seemingly turning the blame on herself, not her departed lover. Reengaging her fan base is critical if Adele hopes to post album sales anywhere close to the 11 Million copies '21' sold. Unlike a performer like Taylor Swift, who has a concentration of enthusiasts that can easily be mobilised, Adele audience is more fragmented and widely distributed, which will require the marketing of the album to continue to be on point. 
• Refuses to play the game - Beyond her voice and universal themes of her songs, she achieved notoriety by not playing by the typical rules. She doesn't headline big music festivals or giant arenas, preferring intimate venues. She refuses to associate her music with advertising. And, beyond what she reveals in her songs and what she cannot hide like the birth of her son, she keeps her life private, restricting interviews. 

Media Theory

Representation 

Laura Mulvey: Male Gaze Theory 

The Male Gaze Theory describes how the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. Mulvey believes that women should enjoy the attention of attractive the gaze, and put themselves in positions to be looked at. The concept of the gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera comes from factors such as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres. 
The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may, for instance linger over the curves of a woman's body. 
The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: 

• As an erotic object for both the characters within the film 
• The spectator who is watching the film 

The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of patriarchal order and it is often seen in illusionistic narrative film. 

Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze, reflecting an underlying power asymmetry. 

Mulvey also states that the female gaze is the same as the male gaze as women look at themselves through the eyes of men. A feminist may see the male gaze as either a manifestation of unequal power between gazer and gazed, or as a conscious or subconscious attempt to develop that inequality. From this perspective, a woman who welcomes an objectifying gaze may be simply seeking to benefit men. 

The Male Gaze typically focuses on: 

• Emphasising curves of the female body 
• Referring to women as objects rather than people 
• The display of women is how men think they should be perceived 
• Female viewers, view the content through the eyes of a man 

Stuart Hall: Representation Theory 

Hall emphasises the importance of visual representation - the image seems to be the prevalent sign of late modern culture. 

Representation - to present/to depict. 

The word suggests something was there already and has been represented by the media. 

Representation as that which stands in for something else. 

Representation is the way in which meaning is given to the things which are depicted that stand in for something. 

Alvarado: Representation of Ethnicity 

His theories related to ethnicity are based on the idea that people from different cultures tend to be defined by how different they are, by their 'otherness'. These representations can focus on racial characteristics and on preconceived audience perceptions. These are often drawn from other media texts rather than from reality and therefore reinforce the stereotype. Alvarado believed that the representation of ethnic groups can be divided into four categories: 

• The Exotic: This stereotype links closely to what Stuart Hall called 'the secret fascination of 'otherness' - this is the way in which the media represents people who are different from us. This can be viewed both positively and negatively but is usually a construction by the text. The 'exotic' stereotype presents the individual in terms of how they look, what they wear, what they eat and their 'different' customs. 

• The Pitied: In certain texts ethnic minorities are stereotyped as vulnerable and as victims. This is true of many newspaper and television news reports of developing countries; this is largely because the only time certain counties appear in the news is when they are linked to disasters, for example famine and earthquakes. Similar representations are used for charity campaigns in order to shock the audience into action. 

• The Humorous: In the context of certain texts, for example situation comedies and film, the audience is encouraged to laugh at the ethnic stereotypes contained within the text. These stereotypes have often been built up over time and, as with all stereotypes, they exaggerate recognisable features and attributes. In the early days of sitcoms racist humour was seen as an acceptable way of making people laugh. This is no longer the case but texts like Citizen Khan have attracted a range of views about the programme which was written by British Muslim Adil Ray. It was one of the most complained about programmes to Ofcom with accusations that it stereotyped the Pakistani community in Britain. 

• Dangerous: Alvarado states that some texts represent ethnic minorities as a threat to society and they are often blamed for social problems. Immigrants are stereotypically represented as benefit cheats and scroungers. The ghettoisation of some social groups reinforces the idea of differences as they become marooned communities who are seen as apart from the norm. Some newspapers manipulate the readers' fear of the unknown by grouping together individuals under the common title of 'immigrants'. This lack of personalisation makes it easier to blame them for a range of social problems. 

Genre

• Daniel Chandler: Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them. Every genre positions those who participate in a text of that kind: as interviewer or interviewee, as listener or storyteller, as a reader or a writer, as a person interested in political matters, as someone to be instructed or as someone who instructs; each of these positioning implies different possibilities for response and for action. Each written text provides a 'reading position' for readers, a position constructed by the writer for the 'ideal reader' of the text. Thus, embedded within texts are assumptions about the 'ideal reader', including their attitudes towards the subject matter and often their class, age, gender and ethnicity. 
• Steve Neale: It is easy to underplay the differences within a genre. He declares that 'genres are instances of repetition and difference'. He adds that 'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre': mere repetition would not attract an audience. 
• John Hartley: Texts often exhibit the conventions of more than one genre. He notes that 'the same text can belong to different genres in different countries or times'. 
• David Buckingham: Traditionally, genres tended to be regarded as fixed forms, but contemporary theory emphasises that both their forms and functions are dynamic. He argues that 'genre is not simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change'. 

'Uses and gratifications' research has identified many potential pleasures of genre, including the following: 

• One pleasure may simply be the recognition of the features of a particular genre because of our familiarity with it. Recognition of what is likely to be important (and what is not) derived from our knowledge of the genre, is necessary in order to follow a plot. 
• Genres may offer various emotional pleasures such as empathy and escapism - a feature which some theoretical commentaries seem to lose sight of. Aristotle acknowledged the special emotional responses which were linked to different genres. Deborah Knight notes that 'satisfaction is guaranteed with genre; the deferral of the inevitable provides the additional pleasure of prolonged anticipation'. 
• Steve Neal argues that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference'; there would be no pleasure without difference. We may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated. We may also enjoy the stretching of a genre in new directions and the consequent shifting of our expectations. 
• Other pleasures can be derived from sharing our experience of a genre with others within an 'interpretive community' which can be characterised by its familiarity with certain genres (Daniel Chandler). 

• Tom Ryall: Genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in the shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures, which act as a form of 'supervision' over the work of production of filmmakers and the work of reading by the audience.
• John Fiske: Defines genres as 'attempts to structure some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences.' 
• Steve Neale: Argues that Hollywood's generic regime performs two inter-related functions: to guarantee meanings and pleasures for audiences and to offset the considerable economic risks of industrial film production by providing cognitive collateral against innovation and difference. Much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of  "difference in repetition" - i.e. recognition of familiar elements and in the way those elements might be orchestrated in an unfamiliar fashion or in the way that unfamiliar elements might be introduced. 
• Rick Altman: Argues that genres are usually defined in terms of media language (semantic elements) and codes (in the Western, for example: guns, horses, landscape, characters or even stars, like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood) or certain ideologies and narratives (syntactic elements). 

Can genre be defined by audience? 

• Neale: Genre is constituted by "specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process." 
• Jonathan Culler: Generic conventions exist to established a contract between creator and reader so as to make certain expectations operative, allowing compliance and deviation from the accepted modes of intelligibility. Acts of communication are rendered intelligible only within the context of a shared conventional framework of expression. 
• Ryall: Sees this framework provided by the generic system; therefore, genre becomes a cognitive repository of images, sounds, stories, characters and expectations. 

To the producers of films, genre is a template for what they make. 

To the distributor/promoter, genre provides assumptions about who the audience is and how to market the films for that specific audience. 

To the audience, it is a label that identifies a liked or disliked formula and provides certain rules of engagement for the spectator in terms of anticipation of pleasure e.g. the anticipation of what will happen in the attic scene in of "The Exorcist". 

When genres become classic, they can exert tremendous influence: production can become quicker and more confident because film makes are following tested formulae and have a ready shorthand to work with, and actors can be filtered into genres and can be seen to have assumed 'star quality' when their mannerisms, physical attributes, way of speaking and acting fit a certain style of genre. 

In turn, viewers become 'generic spectators' and can be said to develop generic memory which helps in the anticipation of events, even though the films themselves might play on certain styles rather than follow a closely cliched formula. E.g. the attic scene from "The Exorcist" - we expect something to jump out on the woman because of all the generic conventions are in place, but in the end, the director deflates the tension. We do not consume films as individual entities, but in an intertextual way. Film is a post modern medium in this way, because movies make sense in relation to other films, not to reality. 

It is the way genre films deviate from the cliched formulae that leads to a more interesting experience for the viewer, but for this to work properly, the audience must be familiar with generic conventions and style. 

David Bordwell: Notes, 'any theme may appear in any genre' 'One could argue that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can mark off genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all experts or ordinary film goers would find acceptable'. 

Audience 

The Passive Audience Idea: 

• Effects theory was developed in the 1920's and looks at how media texts influence those who consume them, particularly how negative messages, i.e. sexual and violent content, can affect the most vulnerable of audience groups. 
• It reflected the dominant views in society about the media and the audience. 
• Reflecting a middle class fear of the masses (working class). 
• Fears of the potential effect this would have on public order and status quo in society. 
• Many of these ideas come from The Frankfurt School from theorists - Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse. 

The 'Hypodermic Needle" Effect: 

• This theory states that the audience takes in and believes the ideologies in all media texts. 
• Where the audience is seen as passive - who play no role in interacting with the media texts concerned. 
• The theory states that these texts function in a one directional communication process - the audience does not think or disagree with the messages and values within the media text.

The Encoding - Decoding Model: Active Audience Theory: 

• Encoding - Decoding is an active audience theory developed by Stuart Hall which examines the relationship between a text and its audience. 
• Encoding is the process by which a text is constructed by its producers. 
• Decoding is the process by which the audience reads, understands and interprets a text. 
• The media encode ideologies into the media texts. The audience decode the messages - and active process - they think. 
• Hall states that texts are polysemic, meaning they may be read differently by different people, depending on their identity, cultural knowledge and opinions. 

Hall's Reception Theory: 

• Reception theory focuses on the role of the audience in the interpretation of a text, instead of on the text itself. 
• In other words, the theory suggests that audience play an active role in reading texts, that each person has the ability to interpret the same text differently, and that a text by itself - i.e. without a reader - has no specific meaning. 
• He termed these different 'readings' of the ideologies in media texts as; The preferred reading, The negotiated reading and The oppositional reading. 

The Pick n Mix Approach to Audience - David Gauntlett: 

• This is the idea that we pick and mix our media (an active choice) 
• We select how we form our identities using media texts. 
• He claims that we can not assume that people are simply influenced by media texts. 

 

Case Study 3 - Adele

Personal Background: Adele originates from Tottenham, London. She attended the BRIT school for Performing arts and technology and graduated in 2006. 

Musical Industry Background and Context: Adele was given a recording contract by XL Recordings after a friend posted her demo on Myspace the same year. In 2007, she received the Brit Awards "Critics' Choice" award and won the BBC Sound of 2008 poll. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 to commercial and critical success. It is certified seven times platinum in the UK, and three times platinum in the US. The album contains her first song, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16, which is based on her home suburb of West Norwood in London. An appearance she made on Saturday Night Live in late 2008 boosted her career in the US. At the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009, Adele received the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. 
Record Labels: XL Recordings, Columbia Records, Universal Music Group. 
Her music genre has remained consistent throughout her entire career and sticks to the genre of Pop music mixed with Soul. 

Industry Profile: She has won many awards throughout her career, including various 'Grammys' for things such as 'Album of the Year' and 'Song of the Year' as well as 'BRIT Awards', 'AMA's' and 'Billboard Awards'. 
She has a huge social media following with over 29 million followers on Twitter and 32 Million followers on Instagram. 
She has been featured in other media industries such as TV for promotion of her albums and songs that are upcoming, as well as having the main theme song for Skyfall in 2012. 

Genre and Conventions: Adele's early music consisted of a lot of Soul sounds with some incorporation of Pop mixed in, however now she has ventured more into Pop Music but not the conventional upbeat type. Her songs normally feature lyrics about heartbreak and are therefore more slow and heartfelt sounding compared to conventional Pop Music. In recent dates she has made more upbeat songs that have featured the Soul sound once again so mixes her styles between both of these genres frequently. 

Lyrical Themes and Narratives: Music Videos. 
'Hello' - At the beginning of the video, it has a movie type feel to it as it has dialogue and some acting in it to set the scene, this continues throughout the video at some points where their will be dialogue and acting in the background whilst the song is playing. 
The entire video has no colour in and has a dark filter over it to make the video seem gloomy and depressing to fit in with the lyrics that about love and heartbreak which is the conventional types of songs she makes. 
The video is set in an old abandoned house in the middle of the woods, which is also shown as the video goes on and is also abandoned and features an old phone box to connote her feelings of loneliness from her heartbreak and the use of the phone box links in with the lyrics of her calling the person she's in love with and him not picking up, which is why it is covered in leaves, twigs, etc and is old and broken. 
At the beginning the video it is quite chilled out with close ups of Adele making tea and walking around the house but gets more dramatic as time goes on, showing flashbacks of a man which seems to be who she is singing about which starts off with happy memories then converts to bad ones to show the journey in which her relationship went in. The video seems to get more dramatic as the chorus kicks in to fit in with the change in tempo. 
She is the main person featured throughout but it also features a man who is represented as her boyfriend who she has issues with. The video doesn't really explore many different groups of people, it only really explores ethnicity and gender as the male in the video is black. 
There are mainly close ups of Adele during the chorus and at the beginning and very end of the video where she often gives direct address with the camera. 
Overall the entire video is very atmospheric as it is very dramatic and emotional. 

'Someone Like You' - This video is set outside, in the same location throughout which is around Paris, which could be an oxymoron as Paris is associated as the city of love but this song is about heartbreak and moving on from love. The camera shots are mainly close ups of her face where she often gives direct address, particularly during the chorus, but also features shots of the city to show the setting clearly. 
The video is nearly all of her just walking around whilst singing the song which connotes her reflecting on her thoughts and feelings, up until the very end she is the only person featured in the video but then there is a mystery man who's face is not shown which could represent the man she is trying to move on from. 
Much like the other video, this video doesn't have any colour in it and is all in a black and white dark film filter to represent the nature of the song as being gloomy and sad once again. 

'Send My Love (To Your New Lover) - The video starts off as a long shot of Adele on a plain black background and starts to slowly zoom in as she sings to end up in a close up of her face where there is then an overlap of her doing different movements from different angles and perspectives. 
She is the only person featured throughout the entire video and unlike the previous videos this video features lots of colour through the use of her clothing as well as post production. Also unlike her other videos that focused heavily on facial expression, this video focuses a lot of movement to create a more interesting effect to fit in with the beat of the song as this is a lot more upbeat compared to what she has done before, even though it is still about love and moving on, she makes this song seem more like its a good thing whereas its seemed sad in other songs she's done. 
At the end of the video the camera zooms out to be a long shot and just one version of her again to replicate what it was like at the beginning of the video. 

Audience: Adele's target audience would mainly be older women from a similar background to her as they can relate to not only her music but also her well known persona. 
Her album became the best selling album in 2016 selling over 1.7 Million copies in the U.S. 
Audiences all respond very well with Adele as she is perceived as a very normal, relatable character and is genuinely very talented and different to a lot of artists today. 

Marketing Techniques: Album Cover.



This is the album cover to Adele's 3rd album titled '25'. The image is very similar to how she looks in the 'Hello' music video with her make up and the filter thats on both the music video and on the front cover, so there is already a direct link for the audience to see. The image is very direct with her looking straight into the camera to engage with the audience more and to seem more striking at first glance. 
The fact that her name is nowhere on the album cover denotes that she is that well known from her image and that people will know who made the album just by seeing her image and not by her name. 
It is very minimalistic yet striking, due to the direct address, which could connote her as a person and her music. 
The audience is targeted by the extreme direct close up image of her as they will be able to see who made album straight away.