LSD - Lyrics Sounds & Decibels
Angelo, Jonathan, Jason
Critical Self Reflection
• How do your products represent social groups or issues?
Our podcast talks about music and the entertainment industry at large. But in the last two episodes, it focuses mostly on the lives of artists instead of the actual production of the music. And as such, all of the representation present in the podcast is about the musicians themselves. For example, Harry styles as mentioned in the second episode, represented the Unisex or Uni gender community by using girlish clothes in His music video for ‘As it Was’.
The majority of these representations though are conforming to preexisting stereotypes. This includes things like, artists tend to do illegal substances, they tend to have depression and mysterious or shady deals behind the audiences backs. We mention this directly on the first podcast , Where some artists like Amy Winehouse died from Substance / alcohol abuse, while some like Kurt Cobain died from Suicide. This fits Ricard Dyer's theory of Stardom, where audiences have so much interest in the artist that it puts a lot of pressure on them to look their very best. While it's often not directly or obvious, These artists would have severe mental problems behind the scenes which leads to their downfall.
The talk of the devil is also very apparent in this podcast, Where we indirectly mention how ‘He’ controls the music industry by having artists become popular in exchange for their lives. That was practically the entire point of the ‘27 Club’ , a mystery that is either truly the devil or a very freaky coincidence. Either way, it sparks curiosity amongst audiences. And sometimes the devil might not be the literal devil , but instead pressure from the entertainment industry.
All these representations portray musicians in a negative way, While not everyone would dislike them just because of that, it would still surely make audiences question themselves of whether these musicians are truly what they say they are? This fits with the Postmodern theory of ‘Simulacra’ where everything is just an act, audiences can’t really decide whether it's real or fake yet they enjoy it nonetheless.
• How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
While both episodes had different styles and topics we tried to keep a few things the same. First, I always try to add snippets of songs from each episode. I feel like this is important to give audiences a clear idea of the song and also to make things more interesting. The snippets would depend on what artist or song were discussing but, if we were to continue this podcast in the future, All episodes must include this.
Secondly, all two episodes had an intro yet no outro. The intro has the purpose of having Jo give a brief explanation of what we were discussing, but we make it unique by giving a different bed, tone and atmosphere depending on the topic. For example the first intro was far more dark and chilling than the second. This unique style of introductions, we hope would give audiences a sense of branding to our podcast and also keep the audience interested, as most of the times, people tend to get bored or skip intro altogether.
• How do your products engage with the audience?
The two episodes that we made had two very different styles and atmospheres. While the first was mysterious, suspenseful and dark, The second was far more relaxed and chill. This is done as both episodes had clearly different types of topics.
The first was almost an unsolved mystery / conspiracy which really didn’t fit in too much with music if not for the artist involved. But as human nature would define it, We are automatically interested in things that are mysterious and unsolved. This is why the horror genre as a whole which basically by itself is a huge mystery is so popular amongst people, the suspense and of the unknown scares us yet we are too curious to close our eyes.
To achieve this sense of suspense, unlike the second episode which featured a bed behind the vocals, the first did not. It only included small snippets of songs of dead artists that we mentioned, which is quite a scary thought if you think about it. These snippets raise the interest of audiences as it references popular songs which they might pick up while also at the same time giving them an idea of what these artists are capable of. Many codes within Barthes 5 codes are present here. The whole podcast was basically a Hermeneutic Code which made audiences question the mystery. In addition Semantic codes like the low bass rumble in the backstory which usually connotes that something bad is going to happen, puts audiences at the edge of their seats. Finally the talk of the devil top off the already mysterious podcast and makes it even more scary. In the end the audience might ask themselves, “Is the devil behind all of this?”. Well He probably isn’t, though audiences' interests are peaked.
The second episode was talking about the meaning behind Harry’s Styles song ‘As it Was’, which was an upbeat / disco type of song. Unlike the first episode, this one was far more straightforward and simple. The topics weren’t as mind bending or mysterious as the first, which by itself can have a preferred reading to some audiences. As such it didn’t require a suspenseful tone, So we added a bed to make things feel more relaxed. In addition, our conversations in this podcast were noticeably more casual, the tone was more friendly, we joked around and had fun, which was the entire point of this podcast. Just a little fun discussion between three friends talking about music. We didn’t go too in depth in the production of the song, but that was not the point, were not trying to attract audiences through breaking down a song in detail like ‘Dissect’, but instead were trying to attract them through a casual type of conversations like ‘Always Sunny in Philadelphia’\
Our sosial media account is also a way for audiences to directly contact us and reply to our posts and podcasts. This encourages interaction between producers and audiences where we can learn what the audience expects and fix any mistakes that might have appeared in the podcast.
• How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
The vast majority of our research went into what type of podcast we want to be. Do we want to be a casual or serious type or do we want to be detailed or simple, there’s quite a lot of binary opposites but eventually through the poll that we did and by our comfort we chose to do a casual type of podcast, nothing too serious and detailed but enough to get the audience's interest.
The question was how? Creating a podcast was harder than what I originally thought, especially during the research and planning stage. We had to get our ideas straight and through, our group didn't want to make a podcast that sounded boring like the vast majority of History podcasts that we watched in class. At the same time we had to choose a topic that everyone liked and had an interest in.
Soon, while researching podcasts Lakila discovered Dissect and from there it became clear to us that Music was the best option, it was diverse, large and liked by everyone. I did more research on that, by listening to more episodes by Dissect and other music podcasts. What I found is that most of these types of podcasts discuss either the lives of the artists or the production or meaning behind they’re songs. From what I gathered, none discussed mysteries regarding music. This resulted in the 27 Club which we hoped would break the common expectations of music podcasts. Though the stereotypes and representations within our podcast itself confirm traditional beliefs. .
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