4AD

Client Brief.

Client: 4ADGuest tutor: Vaughan Oliver

Brief: Design and pitch an idea for a digital product that is built around a sampler that 4AD will release early 2012 to promote the label and its artists.

Research.

I began by researching into new and interesting ways of distributing music to look for some inspiration. Below are some images of my findings. As a new media student I felt it important that my proposed method for distributing the music would be very ‘up to date’.

Flash Memory Interactive Remixable albums

Biophilia: is an album by the artist, Bjork.

The album is “partly recorded” on an iPad and, as well as a standard CD release, also released in the form of a series of apps. Biophilia is the world’s “first app album” in collaboration with Apple. Björk has described the project as a multimedia collection “encompassing music, apps, internet, installations, and live shows”.

I then began to look at some of the artists of 4AD, mainly those that were part of the exclusive sampler that we received. These include the likes of The Big Pink, perhaps the most well known of all the artists, Gang Gang Dance and Twin Shadow.

The Big Pink are an electro-rock duo who signed to 4AD in 2009. Some fo thier songs include, ‘Dominos’, ‘Velvet‘ and ‘Stay Gold’. Pictured below are two of their album covers.

Future This.

From there debut album A Bried History of Love.

Remix Culture: This is a term used to describe combining or editing materials to produce a new product. I chose to look into remix culture as it is something which is becoming more popular in the new media world, especially in the music business.

“A Remix Culture would be, by default, permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of copyright holders. In his 2008 book, Remix, Lawrence Lessig presents this as a desirable ideal and argues, among other things, that the health, progress, and wealth creation of a culture is fundamentally tied to this participatory remix process.” (Wikipedia, 2011).

4AD

Ideas.

These were my first ideas:1. App with sampler songs that you download onto your smartphone for a small charge, say 99p. You as an individual contribute by creating your own album artwork which will be uploaded and available for others to choose when purchasing an album. This could be a competition and if you win you recieve an album of choice for free from 4AD of one of your favourite artists. It could also be in a chosen format, for example, MP3/iTunes, CD or perhaps even old school vinyl.

2. This is part of the same idea. Purchase an album online in the 4AD store > at a section along the buying process you have the oppotunity to create your own artwork for the album cover > the difference here being that you will be using software on the 4AD website, possibly Flash.

3. 3D memory stick samplers with the songs and some editing software. The memory sticks could look like the chip that is used as the brain of the Termintor T-101 from the Terminator blockbusters. This may not be relevant to 4AD unless I can find a link somehwere. It would however be quite an interesting looking memory stick – it does relate in a sense to modern digital, online, remix culture and so on.

First App Concept Drawings.

I decided to create the icons for the app myself. I began by using Adobe Illustrator for some of the icons, pictured above. I also used Autodesk 3DS Max for some of the others. The first version of these can be seen below. The first visual concept of the app can also be seen below

Research.

After doing some more research online I stumbled across some interesting points from a theorist.

Place: a lot has changed. Music is no longer kept in a shop, but it is everywhere. This also means that music no longer has to travel via a publisher or a shop to reach consumers. Artists can get their music to consumers directly, but there is also a lot of consumer-to-consumer exchange. The traditional industry has basically lost control over the distribution of their product.

Price: the price has dropped from x to zero. That which is easily reproduced, is now available for nothing.

Promotion: the traditional word of mouth has become (a very powerful) word of mouse. Promotion is discussed in much more detail in the solutions section.

Product: the physical product has also become digital (note that it has not been replaced). What was rigid before, has become very liquid. What was previously almost only attainable in its official form, has now become massively available in the form of unofficial (illegal) copies. People do not have to go to a shop anymore, people don’t even have to download anymore; they can stream the music they want to hear directly. Music has become like water.

http://basbasbas.com/thesis/

4AD

The App Concept:

1. Download the 4AD Sampler App

2. Create your own album artwork using the App, first choose your artist and then use the tools. There is also a camera button feature and ‘open library’ so you can take a photo or choose an existing image in your library that you would see appropriate.

3. Upload your creation to the 4AD website 4. Once you upload your contribution you recieve access to download the sampler

5. Your album artwork will become available for others to choose from when purchasing an album from 4AD

Pictured right is the final app concept. Below are images suggesting how the website could look.

There could potentially be a competition and the 4AD artists choose a final selection of albums that they would be happy to represent their music on an album they release. The whole idea relates to remix culture and a community could be created.

To develop the concept further we could take remix culture a step into the future and make all the artworks that people upload available for remixing, re-editing. It could even be used to edit existingf album covers removing the extra costs of a designer for 4AD and the artists.