Music Piracy Article Evaluation.

Music Piracy Article Evaluation. 

In AS Media studies so far I have learnt about music piracy, I have learnt about piracy through class discussions, debates and also my own research online. As a consequence of learning this I had a task to create a article on 'the changing face of the music industry' due to piracy.  

To create my article I had to do my own research, to make guidelines about what was going to be written, as well as what celebrities/artists I was going to feature. I used articles about music piracy for inspiration about what I should include, from newspapers and sites like The Guardian and CNET. The guardian gave me an idea on how I was going to write my article and CNET gave me quotes on how artists like 50 cent and Nikki Minaj feel about piracy. I thought Nikki Minaj and 50 cent would be most suitable for my article as they are both world wide superstars due to their music and in the charts for the most pirated, with this in mind both artists had very conflicting views on piracy which I though would make me article very interesting and leave the audience with no guidance on which artist to follow as they are both very influential people, making the audience have to make up their own mind on how they feel about music piracy. Most of the sites where I had done my research were from the US and dated from years before 2014, however I didn't see this as an issue because my article was aimed to be in a world wide magazine and both artists I used in my article are very popular in the UK. I included some information that I had learnt in class; most of these were points used in our class debate about "piracy is destroying the music industry" I found the debate helpful as it gave me loads of things to write about in my for and against argument about piracy included in my article. I believe that my strength in research skills is; that I included only information that was relevant to my article, and something I would do to improve is; include artists from two different genres, to show that I have thought about the whole music industry rather than one genre. 

To start writing my article, I had to think about my audience and type of magazine I wanted my article to feature in. The type of magazine I wanted my article to feature in was Cosmopolitan magazine as it fitted my audiences demographic profile; which was women and men aged 16-34 who had an interest in fashion, music and trends. I chose this target audience as I thought that these aged people would also have a keen interest in music, as music and fashion often play hand in hand as many artists often feature in fashion magazines. Next I had to think about the language and tone I was going to write in. I aimed to write in a way that made the reader feel as though they were part of the article for example: using rhetorical questions etc. However I ended up writing in a more informative language which included lots of sources and statistics. For example my opening sentence included, "Every year £200 million is lost due to music piracy." This shows that I introduced piracy in a serious tone as I started off with a statistic rather than a definition. In addition to language I wrote my article in 3rd person however, all my research information e.g quotes are all in 1st person. I think writing in 3rd person worked well as the article wasn't biased on one persons view and instead it allowed my to argue both sides of the argument. Also I believe I wrote my article in mostly Latin lexis as I used lots of longer, complicated words to make my article sound more educated and knowledgeable to fit the audience of my magazine. One thing I think I am good at when it comes to journalism is knowing how to change the language, lexis and tone to fit the type of magazine your article will be featured in, with this in mind one thing I would improve on is learning how to write in first person. 

I used Adobe InDesign to put all my work together to create the final piece. I used Microsoft word to type up my article as it corrects any spelling and grammar mistakes whereas InDesign doesn’t. Then I copied and pasted my article into my template text boxes which I created using InDesign. I found selecting objects such as pictures and columns easy to adjust as the selection tool is always visible in a toolbar on the left of the screen and also changing the size of the heading was easy as the size option was in a similar place to what Microsoft word is. On the other hand I found changing the colour of the text tricky because I didn't realise that there was a colour option on the top toolbar and instead I was using a tool which allowed me to pick a colour from a 360 degree colour option. In addition to this I found picking a font hard as there was hundreds to choose from, but to resolve this I looked up articles by Cosmopolitan magazine and I looked at the type of font they used which was very simple and easy to read. From using InDesign I have learnt how to create a professional looking article and also how easy it is to export your work as a JPEG. One thing I would do to improve next time is making my text box containing my picture caption bigger so it doesn’t include any hyphens. 

Lastly I uploaded my article to my AS Media studies blog. I found this hard because I had no experience of using blog or even uploading a new post including an image. However it was very straight forward, the 'new post' option was at the top of the page making it easy to identify and the add image logo was again at the top toolbar of the page. Despite finding it easy to upload my article to blog I struggled to write anything to go with it so I left it blank and just titled my post. After uploading my article to my blog I was paired up with one of my peers and we had to give each other feedback on our articles this included language, layout , font etc. I found this useful as it allowed me to understand different magazines genres that their articles were aimed at, and how it affects the language and style their article are written in. Also having audience feedback made me recognize my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to creating an article. Four targets I would give myself next time is to acknowledge a broader audience when it comes to sourcing information, writing in different styles e.g 1st person and maybe using a more simple lexis e.g: old English, also review my work before submitting it as I noticed the hyphen in my article after I posted it on my blog and lastly choose a better colour font so my article is easier to read.