Exam Questions - Estelle

1.How do the two media products represent women in the music industry? (8 mark)

Women are generally shown to be attractive, sexy and feminine in the music industry unless there are certain exceptions where their character requires them to act in a non feminine manner. But the common view of females involved in this sort of a career tends to lean towards them being desirable because of their high sex appeal. The appearance matters. The appearance of Estelle, her clothes, accessories, make-up and hair styling at the Mobos conveyed exactly that. The new media, her website design reflected femininity too with a big close up of her hair and one eye image almost anticipating to capture the full attention span of the website browsers. Also at the Mobos, Estelle stated “...it took me a while to get here...” in her award winning speech. This expresses the hardship that women have to go through to be successful in the music industry because it may not be too obvious but it is run by male singers. ‘Glass ceiling’ – Marxist theory

2.How and why do programme such as the MOBO awards appeal to niche audiences? You may also refer to the other media product to support your answer. (12 mark)

Niche audience means a selective minority audience. The Mobo awards reaches and appeals to a lot more audiences than the niche audience. But it also works well in appealing to the niche audiences as well. This is because the awards were broadcasted on BBC3 which is a terrestrial channel but it is not the main channel. This means the audience demographic of channel BBC3 is evidently more interested in entertaining programmes, this goes on to justify the age group of this particular channel which is 16-34, ideal for the Mobo awards . BBC3 is a terrestrial channel as noted earlier, meaning it’s free, this attracts a lot more audiences than a subscribed channel would.

3.What are the advantages and disadvantages for performers of using the internet as marketing tool? You should also refer to other media products to support you answer. (12 marks)

New Media/web 0.2
Advantages are, that the information reaches mass population, things can be passed around from one person to another because of the occurrence of social networking websites , the internet is also affordable to use, furthermore the artist can express themselves in any manner they want and can also gain feedback from the audience.
The disadvantages are that the originality and creativity of artists may be stolen which will affect the popularity of the real artist and the financial department of the production. Also certain personal information may be leaked on to the internet which may result in violating the artist’s image and character created in front of the consumers.