Music Video Semiotic Analysis

The music video from Vampire Weekend for the single 'Oxford Comma', directed by Richard Ayoade

This video points fairly clearly towards the indie genre. The fact that it is mostly natural lighting, contains few visual effects and is shot on location is typical of indie music videos due to their low budget. Also this video is not performance based and contains very little complex choreography as opposed to pop videos. They also show the conventional and iconographic instruments for indie bands, like the drums, guitar, keyboard and bass.

Oxford Comma: a comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’ (e.g. an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect).

Ezra Koenig (the lead singer) discussed in an interview that the song "is more about not giving a fuck than about Oxford commas", which I think is also made obvious in the first line 'Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma'. The video also seems to be shot in one take and always as a long shot, and I think this may link to that theme as the uncut shot represents the lack of, and unimportance, of grammar.

To me, the simple and clear structure for the video, which is put into chapters, represents how he thinks that everything should be as simple and easy as this.

There are many postmodern culture references in this video, the main one being style references to the American filmmaker Wes Anderson. They copy stylistic techniques such as tracking shots, slow motion running, extras in silly costumes, on-screen text in Futura font and picturesque freeze frames.

At 1:01 a woman dressed in green with a bullet belt satirically pretends to shoot one of the extras, introducing an old western theme to the video.

The costume of the band is stylised to the 1970s theme of the video. They all conform to a colour scheme of black, white and blue, wearing either a suit or a pullover jumper over a shirt. They are dressed this way to promote the eccentric and vintage style the band have. The mise-en-scene illustrate the 1970s theme further, for example the pieces of technology the cameraman and reporters use at 0:45 are classic and dated movie apparatus.

Another meaning I interpreted from this video was that he thinks that everyone should stop trying to be the same and perfect all the time because everyone is different. I think this is portrayed through the lyrics 'I met the highest lama, his accent sounded fine to me' and 'check your handbook, it's no trick, take the chapstick, put it on your lips', which has a visual representation of different people sat around the lead singer wearing different clothes to him and they are all comfortable with what they're doing. Lastly, at 2:07, Koenig walks past four other extras who are wearing the same clothes as him, have the same guitar and are copying his actions, adding to this theme of everyone wanting to be the same.

Audiences

I created my own questions and interviewed four different people of different age groups and genders to learn more about different kinds of audiences in the music industry, and how they consume their music.

From this sample of information that I gathered, I can conclude that:

• Younger age groups tend to value their music less and download it illegally
• However, younger age groups listen to and consume music more than older age groups
• Younger age groups listen more to genres like pop, rock and indie
• Older age groups listen less to new music and more to older artists like Pink Floyd
• All age groups consume music through similar mediums, for example through the iPod, radio or online

Record Labels

Whilst keeping the brief in mind, I did some research into UK, independent recording labels who are responsible for representing, funding and promoting new bands and artists.

XL Recordings

XL Recordings is a British independent record label, established in 1989. They support a variety of genres from alternative, like Radiohead, to Rap, like Dizzee Rascal. Other current artists I recognised from their list of artists were Adele (pop), Vampire Weekend (alternative) and The xx (alternative).

XL Website

Domino

Domino Recording Company (founded 1993), is an independent record label based in London. Domino generally releases artists of the indie-pop and indie-rock genre. Some well known artists they support are Alex Turner, Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand.

Domino Website

Hyperdub

Hyperdub is a London based record label and former webzine. The label was created in 2004. This company employs dubstep, electronic and grime artists.

Hyperdub Website

Rough Trade Records

Rough Trade is an independent record company based in London, formed in 1978. This record company release a variety music of different genres but focus mainly on indie rock, indie pop and post punk. Some current artists I recognised from their lists were Arcade Fire, Belle and Sebastian, The Libertines, Mystery Jets, Palma Violets and The Strokes.

Rough Trade Website

How The UK Consume Music

To find out more about the UK's music consumption, I looked over a quantitative report about
the music consumption patterns of UK households, written by the BPI in November 2011, which used a sample of 1000 UK music consumers of different ages, gender and household composition.

Figure 1

From figure 1 I could see that consumption of physical CDs and free copies of music is slowly suffering, in addition to this the more increasingly popular approaches to consuming music are all free: free downloads,  listening to the radio, free illegal streaming, internet radio and watching music videos on YouTube. However, legal and paid downloading and streaming of digital music has escalated due to the music industry's publicising of now well-known music stores and streamers like Deezer, Spotify, Shazam, Napster, eMusic, Lastfm, Soundcloud and BBC iPlayer Radio.

Yet looking below at the percentages in figure 1, I notice that the percentage of people who consume music through CDs is at 86%, which is the highest figure there.

Figure 2

Figure 2 demonstrates that younger age groups tend value music less, paying for an average of 38% of their music. Conversely, the older age groups prefer to pay for their music and own an average of 58% of their music share.

Figure 3 (Music Consumption by Age Group)

Figure 3 is taken from BPI's 2013 statistics. It shows that the music industry's main customer, who spend the most of their money on music than any other age group, are 13-24 year-olds.

Overall, from this information I've discovered that:

• Even though CDs dominate music consumption in the UK, it is declining
• Music is increasingly being downloaded illegally and also listened to for free on legal music streaming sites such as Youtube and internet radio stations, especially by younger age groups of people
• Paid music streaming sites are becoming more popular among the UK consumers
• 13-24 year-olds pay for music the most

Current Trends in Popular Music & What Is Selling Well

The Official UK Top 40 Singles Chart September 2014

Firstly looking at the UK charts, I could see a range of different music, varying in genre and audience. A common trait in the majority of the singles is that they are all fairly new and released within this year, furthermore most of the older tracks, which are around 30 weeks old, are farther down the list and keep dropping, whereas the newer songs tend to be at the top.

The genre varies from dance (David Guetta - Lovers On The Sun), indie (Riptide - Vance Joy), RnB (Iggy Azalea - Black Widow) and pop (Taylor Swift - Shake It Off). This shows the UK music consumers' diverse taste in music.

Album sales by genre (BPI, 2013)

Using facts from BPI's 2013 statistics, I found that the most bought music genres are rock and pop both dominating by around 30% each, then followed by other music genres like dance (8.3%), MOR/easy (8.1%) and R&B (5.7%) with much lower percentages.

Singles sales by genre (BPI, 2013)

However with singles, as opposed to albums, pop-genre music has predominated the charts every year from 2009, well above rock music.

My Personal Consumption of Music

I listen to music almost every day when I'm on public transport and during my free time at home, usually in the background whilst doing other activities, such as surfing the web or tidying my room. However I can't listen to music while I study or read a book, otherwise it becomes too distracting.

It has become part of a daily routine to listen to music in the morning, on the way to school. Listening to music, for me, is an individual experience and I tend not to share my own music taste with others, however I do enjoy music being shared with me by my friends, family and the media, because I love finding and listening to new music.

When I'm out of the house I use my iPod, but at home I use my radio or my laptop and listen to either my own library of music that I have downloaded, on iTunes, or on internet radio stations like 8tracks.com, again to find new music to listen to.

Listening to music is an experience I usually do alone, yet music consumption overlaps with my social life, like when occasionally going to gigs or festivals for particular artists that I like with my friends.

I feel that listening to music helps me to fill silences when I'm by myself and sometimes with other people, but also it helps to create a mood, for example when I'm coming home from school, I prefer to listen to slower and quieter music to feel more relaxed. However if I was getting ready to go out, I would opt for more upbeat music. For this reason, my music taste varies from a few different genres to gratify my different needs.

Music that means something to me

A band I distinctly remember from my childhood is Abba. My parents, who were my sole influence for my music taste at the time, would play Abba's 'Gold: Greatest Hits' album on repeat when we went on journeys with the car, and my sister and I would sing along for sometimes hours, one of our favourites was Money, Money, Money.

When I started to develop my own tastes in music during my early teens, I enjoyed listening to pop music like Busted and Britney Spears, whose albums I would listen to religiously. Some of my favourites were Toxic and Year 3000. This was a time where my music taste was influenced largely by my friends at the time and a few media platforms, like the TV and sometimes the internet.

Nowadays, I am exposed to a much wider variety of new music and different genres through my friends, family, TV, the internet, radio stations and posters for artists. This means that my taste is more varied and more up-to-date. My current favourite band, that means something to me and that I've liked for years, are the Arctic Monkeys, my favourite song from their newest album 'AM' is 'Snap Out Of It'. They were one of the main gateway bands that I listened to going into alternative style music. I also like them because I can listen to them regardless of what mood I'm in, which meant that I listened to them all the time.

Prelim: Edit