Media Studies A2 homework

1. Website
Our website
The homepage uses the generic conventions of
including a portrait of the artist, his name and the title of
the latest album. As with the digipak, this is an effective
method of raising awareness of the star and creating
demand for his products. The large social media icons
provide the audience with the possibility to interact and
further raise the awareness of the artist.
Steve Aoki’s website features his name as
the first component seen by the audience
Steve Aoki’s image
The title and cover
of the latest album
The same conventions employed
on Chainsmokers’ homepage
Martin Garrix’s website
does not include the
artist’s portrait, but his
name is the first
available information

2. The dominant fraction of record labels’ profits comes from live concerts as
they attach value to consumption of the star as a commodity, while the
music can be downloaded for free in the online age. Thus the tour page
attracts the audience’s attention through symbolic conventions of bright
colours and visually interesting images.
We employed the technical convention of making the information
easily comprehendible. The text is written in large letters and easily
readable font to ensure that the audience would be able to make
the purchase. The concerts are listed in a chronological order and
all the details required for attending are provided.
David Guetta’s tour page
The audience is immediately
aware of the concerts’ location
More information on the tickets
and the address is provided
There is nothing that coul
distract the audience from
tickets’ consumption on
DJ Snake’s tour page
Tour page substitutes the homepage at Deadmau5 website,
due to the high revenue the record label receives from
concerts and thus the importance of maintaining tour sales

3. Merchandise is the second largest source of revenue for the
record labels as. By including interactive features in the
merchandise page, such as the enlargement of items’ icons when
the cursor is pointed at them, we used a technical convention
employed in multiple homepages of the genre. Interactivity raises
the audience’s interest as they are able to view the product in
more detail and imagine possible uses of it.
Daft Punk’s merch page
ZHU’s merch page
Major Lazer’s
merch page
All of these examples employ the technical
convention of interactivity to raise the
consumers’ demand for the march.

4. Because of the ease at which data is transmitted in the
online age piracy is a serious threat for the music industry.
Texts can be downloaded for free. Thus the employment of
the technical convention of interacting with the texts, such as
by being able to play the music before purchasing it, is a
method of raising the audience’s interest and creating
immediate demand, so there would a higher possibility that
the audience will purchase the text at the website instead of
consuming it for free from an illegal supplier. Our website
used the convention as evident from the examples below:
Calvin Harris’s music page
Afrojack’s music page