USING, DEVELOPING AND CHALLENGING THE

CONVENTIONS OF A WEBSITE.

Referencing www.adele.tv www.emelisande.com www.palomafaith.comwww.edsheeran.com

After research I found that most soul/pop artists have relativity simple sites, it also follows in the black and white theme. Adele especially has a really simplistic site, making everything easier to find and navigate, although Sande’s website has more content and colour, it follows the suit of simplicity. This is something I tried and accomplished into my site, the theme throughout remained black and white and it was also simple to use.

I took a lot of inspiration form Emeli Sandes’ music page, it shows you the album name and the titles of each song, her page headings also influenced my choice when constructing the website. The website also influenced my decision to add link to her social media, however I added icons of the media instead of text.

Each artist I researched they had a merchandise page, conventional for 21st century as it is another aspect in which they make money. These products can range from mugs to posters. During research I found that if the artist has a new album out with a main colour then most/all of their merchandise will incorporate this colour. For example Ed Sheeran’s new album is predominantly green and so most of his merch incorporate this. Following this theme most of Jayas merchandise is black and white (to go with her website and digipak).

Paloma Faith’s store page had people wearing the merchandise, I decided that because the jumper was unisex and in a variety of sized I decided to have an image of the jumper without someone wearing it.

Also during website researched all current artists had some type of tour page, which gave fans information on where and when the artist was going to be preforming. This was set up in a variety of ways depending on the artist.

For example, Emeli Sande’s site has an image of her preforming, however both Paloma Faith and Ed Sheeran have a simple background with just the dates and location of their gig. Taking inspiration from the sites by clicking on the ‘News’ button a dropdown box appears where you can click onto the Tour page, I decided to have a performance image of Jaya on the tour dates with the information in a line. Making it easier to view, again it is in black and white to go with the overview of the site.

Some sites I looked at had contact pages, a formality on any site, this allows other agents to contact the band/management. So this is something I oblviously included on my site. The contact box was at the bottom of every page. One reason I did this was for simplicity, it allows the user to contact the band immediately at the bottom instead of having to go to a completely separate page to get contact information.

Most well known artists are contacted directly though there agents and therefor do not have a contact page, an example of this is Paloma Faith, other artists, such as Ed Sheeran, simply direct you to a different page or website. I decided not to do this on the basis that Jaya is a new artist and so contacts mayBe harder to find, therefor by having it on her website it makes it easier for fans and bookings.

I therefor feel that in this aspect of a website I have challenge the norm, by having a contact box at the bottom of each page instead of having a whole page dedicated to contact information, I also feel that by having on the website rather than a link also challenges or at least differs from the norm.

In general most music website have videos of the artist preforming, either at concerts or released singles. The website I looked at varied, for example Ed Sheeran’s site had all his videos in a playlist, which means you can watch the videos non-stop without having to click each individual. Emeli Sande’s website had one video take up the entire page, so it varied site to site. One thing that I did notice that all sites had in common where that the videos where embedded into YouTube and therefor could be watched on the site or searched on YouTube.

So, when it came to creating my website I decided to have each individual video on the site, instead of one playlist. Also instead of having just music videos on there I also added interviews and the ‘trailer for my video. I felt that this gave more of an insight for the fans and made the artist more accessible.