The Essay Explores The Connection Between Music Reality Shows And Audiences.

Provide an analytical paragraph that looks at their production of connection to an audience.  In traditional and legacy media forms, this often is determined in terms of ratings or box office, or sales figures. However, in online cultural forms and video streaming platforms, it is done by downloads, impressions, followers/friends, subscribers, likes, hashtags and shares.  Summarize these formations of audiences and audience involvement from this data. Include where possible, how the particular content is linked with other content and production and how that also through networking is producing audiences and forms of engagement and participation.  If the content is “transformed” in some way into memes, identify how this is also a way of establishing audience engagement and investment and how the production encourages this type of sharing and acknowledgement.

Types and genres of music in media

Music has been one of the oldest form of media that is used for communication and entertainment of the people. It is categorized into various forms and genres depending in the type and location of the music (Poria et al. 2013). However, it is the music of the Western countries, particularly United Kingdom and The United States of America that is predominant. Some of the most common types of musical genre are popular music or pop, rock music, which has multiple subgenres in it, hip-hop, which also has several subgenres, rap, electronic music and classical music. All of these musical genres can be subdivided into subgenres based on their style, extremity and location. The most talked about format of music in the present era are pop music and electronic dance music.

Music reality shows have been on the rise since the evolution of the music industry around the globe. The Australian television telecasts a number of music reality shows that aim of finding and culturing new talent from the common people and give them a platform to showcase their talent in singing. The most popular music reality show in the Australian television is The Voice Australia. The show has a unique format of finding and polishing the raw talent who participate and perform in the show by dividing  the participants into teams headed by a celebrity mentor.

The mentors are none other than the celebrity judges of the show. They select the participants accordingly during the final round of the audition. This is a unique format that is being taken by many music reality shows worldwide since the eradication of the old concept of multiple judges judging the same contestant.

The second most popular show or with a degree of similar level of popularity as The Voice Australia is The X Factor Australia. Needless to say, both these franchises are international in nature and have competitions organized worldwide.  The X Factor Australia is based on the format of Australian Idol, which went out of production in the year 2009. The first stage of the auditions involves the shortlisted participants to sing in front of the judges and a live audience. The second stage includes the short listing of the participants by the judges followed by a home visit. As the competition proceeds, the general public is involved in the form of voting for their favorite participant. The participant with the maximum number of votes from the public ends up qualifying for the finals and perform. It is here that the best performer finally wins the show.

Popular music reality shows in Australia

2. Origins of the Production or Production Team

            The job of the producer is to oversee the business aspects of the production. the producer
            coordinates everything that does not have the involvement of the events if the stage. Elaborately, the producer is the person who coordinates everything on set and facilitates in the smooth production of the show. He looks after every factor on set and makes sure t e production is operated in a smooth manner. It requires huge skills to be a producer.One must have the managerial abilities in order to be a producer. The producer acts as the manager and should be able to take huge amount of work pressure and still operate without causing any fault.

b)      Performer

A performer is required to have a good knowledge of the art and confidence to reach out to the stage and perform. In addition, a complete performer should possess a level of self-awareness. This is because a performer can never understand the strengths and weaknesses of self without evaluating self. Self-awareness motivates the performers and allows them to take the correct decisions (Chekhov2013). The job of a performer is to entertain the public and this is to be done by them being innovative enough to be able to perform perfectly on stage or any other medium depending on, their level of exposure.

c)      Music Director

The role of a music director in a musical reality show production is to conduct rehearsals and performances. A music director should possess a set of different characteristics and qualities that is required to be in the field of musical reality show. Firstly, a music director should be curious in nature and should have the eagerness to keep a track of the knowledge about music (Anderson2013). In addition, a music director should know how to coordinate with the musicians and the performers alike. A music director should be able to train, groom and sometimes even choreograph the flaws of the performers to make them get over the stage fright and be a complete performer.

1.     Forms of Financial Support and Monetization

Advertising in the media industry play a major role in the drawing of financial elements for the production purposes of films and audio visual content. The level of advertising depends on the popularity of the content and the exposure associated with it. Advertising is the measure taken up by the companies and the media alike to promote and fund the products of each other (Buil, De Chernatony and Martinez 2013). Advertising is a great tool of marketing for the companies that brings revenue for the media industry. The media industry sells time slots or spaces in the newspapers for the companies to advertise their products and this is how the revenue collection is made by the media industry from the companies. In case of films, the producers call for sponsorships and product placements to the advertisers for the exchange of money, which allows them to collect enough fund for their content.

Roles of producer, performer, and music director

b)     Crowd-funding

Crowd-funding is a method of collecting financial support and revenue through the efforts of the friends, family and even the common population. This method is generally taken up by the independent filmmakers who do not get the support from sponsors and advertisers. Crowd-funding is taken up by the filmmakers who fail to manage the financial and other forms of support of the producers (Zheng et al. 2014).

There are several benefits of crowd-funding. It increases the reach of the content as it involves thousands of people contributing to the content. These people become the investors and are eager to watch how their funds were utilized. This increases the reach of the content. Crowd-funding is itself a great tool of public relations and marketing because it involves direct communication with the general audience of the content.

c)      Government programs and forms of subsidization

Involvement of the government of a nation plays a major role in the film and broadcasting industry and also has an impact on the collection of the required finance by the filmmakers for their content. The government has kept grants for the funding of quality films which do not get the support of the producers (DiMaggio, Nagand Blei2013). However, the government only supports and funds those films which fall under the criteria set by them. Furthermore, it is difficult to get the grants from the government since they fund only a selected number of films. Subsidization of duties and taxes also act as a tool of convenience for the filmmakers. The subsidies allow the filmmakers to save up a lot of money for the production, which otherwise would have been spent in paying the taxes

2.     Analysis of the Audience/Participants

In order to conduct this analysis, the example of the famous television musical reality show The Voice Australia is considered. It is important for any content in the media industry to analyze and engage with the audience in order to get a traction of the popularity of the content and also to update the content of the shows according to the demand of the audience (Scott2015). The media industry is the most dynamic of all industries and it is possible to change or amend the plot of the story depending on the demand of the audience (Chaffey2016). The marketing strategy of the show The Voice Australia has created a milestone for the rest of the houses and creators. It has also created a scope of research for the scholars and analysts of media.

Forms of financial support and monetization

            The show The Voice Australia is a show for television, which is telecasted by the channel 9 but has managed to become a trend by creating a groundbreaking response amongst the audience using the social media. Data shows that The Voice Australia has been leading the charts in terms of engagement with the audience in the social media (Mooney et al. 2014). The makers have successfully overtaken heavyweight shows like Australian Idol and The X Factor and become one of the most successful shows on television in the recent times. The results and the strategy implemented by the makers of The Voice Australia sheds light on the importance of social media engagement by the producers and filmmakers in order to get maximum reach on their content.

            The industry of media has been one of the most dynamic industries since the beginning. Even though the makers of The Voice Australia have used the utility provided by the social media widely, they have also used the traditional media for the promotions of their show. They have successfully and innovatively advertised their product in the form of advertisements in the newspapers and outdoor hoardings (Pamidimukkalaand Masliah2015). They have also let out merchandise related to their show and made the judges promote them.

The audience had given a huge response to these measures. This in turn has made the show break all the barriers and overtake the competitors in terms of popularity. Furthermore, the makers of The Voice Australia have encouraged and entertained the promotion in the form of memes available on the social media as a humorous mean to promote their show (Bourdaa2014). The memes have always been a source of entertainment for the audience and have been taken up well by them since they were relatable and this resulted in the success of the show.

Conclusion

The strategies taken up by the leading creators of the shows on television and the internet have motivated me to analyze my own project. My project is a musical series called One Take Sessions, which consists of episodes released on a weekly basis. The aim of my project is to encourage the local artists to showcase their talents. The uniqueness of the project is based on two factors. Firstly, it is based on the social media platforms and secondly, the artists perform their songs all in a single take. This requires the involvement of a small but efficient production team, who looks after all the aspects of the show in a prompt manner. The format of the show is almost similar to a live session except the fact that there is no live telecast.

Audience/participant analysis

      The production of the series does not require huge amounts of money but some aesthetic factors such as the involvement of technical equipment and technicians, who are required to be paid. Since this production is on a small scale, we did not get the support from any of the major companies because the show would not serve their marketing purposes. We resorted to the policy and method of crowd-funding.

We wanted to promote the idea of the show “by the people, for the people.” This is why we took up the method of crowd-funding, which allowed us to receive a decent amount of financial support from our audience (Valenzuela2014). Crowd-funding also helped us in engaging with our audience on a pro-active and regular basis, which in turn helped us in promoting the series. Our objective is to build the show on a scale that we finally get the support from the advertisers, who would be looking to expand in the local market.

The audience of our show is entirely based on the social media, which consists of the younger generation mostly. The audience can relate to the kind of music that is performed in our show and this is why we have gained a decent amount of popularity amongst the audience in the social media. We have been able to measure the amount of success through the views, shares and engagement of the audience with our show. Therefore, we have been successfully expanding in the social media, which is considered to be the newest form of media that is on the expansion.

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