How are music albums promoted using the media?

Target Audience and Album Promotion
LADY GAGA
http://www.ladygaga.com/theremix/
To promote the album 'The Fame', Lady Gaga did several performances worldwide. She also performed on various american television shows and performed in Vietnam for a beauty pageant during the swimsuit competition. Three songs off The Fame were used in the series Gossip Girl and she performed the single 'Pokerface' on American Idol. She also performed on Xfactor and then talked about her upcoming tour. Performing on programmes like these targets the right audiences as people watching are people interested in music and are mostly young people that would go to a concert. Also, news that Gaga would be appearing on the show would have spread so the audience watching are most likely fans. To celebrate the launch of the show Dirty Sexy Money, ABC created a music video of Lady Gaga's song 'Beautiful, Dirty, Rich'.

The album received further promotion from her first headlining concert tour The Fame Ball Tour. For her album 'The Fame Monster' which was combined with The Fame as a deluxe edition, Gaga did a Monster Ball tour over all the main cities in the world. This is targeting an international market. Merchandise such as t-shirts and glasses were sold at these events to promote her album. Alternate versions of the show with minimal variations were planned by Gaga to accommodate different venues to suit the different target audiences. Her concerts and merchandise are mostly aimed at teenage girls to young woman and her many gay fans. The genre of music is pop.

An active twitter and face book account can help promote an artist and is a great modern way to keep fans updated and to advertise upcoming albums, videos, gigs and more.

GREENDAY
http://www.greenday.com/billabong_splash/index.html
Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1987. Green Day was originally part of the punk scene.The band's early releases for independent record label Lookout! Records earned it a fan base. As the band have been going since the late 80's I think its hard to say a specific target audience although the majority seems to be teenagers or young adults involved in the punk scene. To promote their albums Greenday go on worldwide tours to promote to as wider audience as possible. This is called global distribution.

Greenday also have a twitter account and a face book which lets them communicate with their fan base and let them know new updates involving the band.

JUSTIN BEIBER
http://www.justinbieberofficial.co.uk/home
The album My World is R&B influenced pop and is compared to the work of artists such as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Chris Brown. The lyrics are based on coming of age situations and teenage love. This indicates that the target audience is going to be mostly teenage girls as they can relate where as teenage boys wont be so interested in hearing a boy singing about love. The way Justin Bieber is promoted attracts a fan base of girls. During 2009, Bieber went on a tour to promote his debut single, visiting several radio stations and performing exclusively. This included American Top 40 and Radio Disney.The 'My World Tour' was announced on March 13 2010. It started in June and is scheduled to end on December 23rd 2010 in Justin Bieber´s hometown Atlanta. Justin Timberlake was apparently in the running to sign him but he eventually signed with Usher. Usher introduced JB to the industry in April 2009 in LA just after he had finished recording his single "One Time". Usher described Bieber to the crowd as a "young phenomenon". Having Usher as he manager and mentor means he probably gains half of Ushers fan base as well. I think this was a wise move being signed with Usher as he is very successful and has a very large fan base. The songs are mostly inspired by teen romance and typical coming of age situations and the album is R&B influenced pop. The R&B being down to Ushers influence. After the albums release JB became the first solo artist in Billboard history to have at least four singles enter the Top 40of the Hot 100 before his debut album's release. This shows he has aimed at the right target audience and has promoted his album in the right way for his image.

His twitter and face book account update fans on his latest news, new releases and tour dates available.

Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fame
http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/green-day.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Breakdown
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_World_(EP)

Time Scedule

Frame number 3 - A boy looking over at someone whilst standing at his locker. Neil is going to play the boy by the locker. He will be wearing a white shirt with a blazer on. This will be filmed in a school corridor with a row of lockers either side.

Frame number 6 - A boy standing at his locker taking his blazer off. Neil is going to be playing this boy wearing the same costume as before but taking his blazer off in the shot. This will be filmed in a school corridor with a row of lockers either side.

Frame number 11 - Two boys dancing. Neil and Sam will be playing these characters and will wear their school uniform. This will be filmed in a school corridor with a row of lockers either side.

Frame number 26 - Boy spinning in the air. Neil will play this character wearing his school uniform. This will be filmed in a school corridor with a row of lockers either side.

A2 Preliminary Task - Music Video Remake

We have been given a task to remake the Britney Spears music video, Hit me baby one more time. Each group has been given 30 seconds each to film and edit. I am in a group of 7 so we have enough people to star in the video and act as the dancers etc and to take turns to film. This consists of myself, Mollee Vasey, Amy Edmonds, Georgia Lansbury, Sam Lai and Neil Kumar as the dancers and Jasmine Bual as Britney Spears. We feel having a big group is an advantage as we can make the video look as realistic as the original as we can have the right number of dancers and we have two boys which are going to play the roles of the boys in our section of the video. The location we have chosen to film in is inside our school as the original video is filmed in a school by some lockers. We have chosen the lockers by the main hall as there is some empty lockers which we will need for our filming and the layout of the lockers looks most like the original set in the video. The props we will need are school uniforms, Jasmine will also need a grey cardigan as that is what Britney wears in the video, and we will need some bags to throw in one of the shots. There will be lip syncing in the video as in the original Britney is lip syncing the words. We need to make sure we get the framing right so in order for us to know how each shot should look we made a storyboard before. The storyboard also included shot types and camera angles so we didn't have to keep watching the video back.