Get Your Ancillary On.

Now that we've finished with our music video, we have to create a promotional package for our artist. This includes a digipak and a magazine advertisment. In yesterdays lesson, we had a discussion about ancillary products and worked together as a group to come up with ideas for our own. We're making these indivually which I think is kind of a good thing because we can be as creative as we want. So to start, Rebecca gave us a few questions to brainstorm and then we regrouped as a class and discussed them further.

1. What is the function of a digipak?
Ultimately, a digipak promotes the artist. In our case, as we are making the debut album for our artist, we need this to advertise her as much as possible. Being her first album, we are advertising the 'brand' so it needs to be done in a good way.

Take Alexandra Burke's debut album, Overcome. It promotes her as it has pictures of her and the customer isnt really distracted from a busy background or obnoxious colours. It's simple and I think it promotes her really well.

Another reason why a digipak is needed is exclusivity. When you buy an album, it gives you additional information about the artist - for example, pictures, lyrics etc.You can't really get that from an online album. When you buy one from the store it's a novelty, your getting a hard copy of the music. If you really like an artist, you'd buy the album to get your moneys worth.

2. Why are digipaks still used despite CD sales dropping?

One reason would be that if you are a true fan of the artist, you will collect their albums because you are a dedicated fan. So fans of Alexandra Burke would know that her debut album was also released in two deluxe versions as the arrows point out. One includes a DVD and the other is a grils night in version. So if your a really massive fan, maybe you'd buy them all. It's kind of a luxury item, again a novelty so its slightly more personal if you buy the album rather than get it online. Sometimes albums contain artwork or exclusive photos which makes it more personal for the customer/fan and they kind of feel like they are getting more for their money. 

I think the most important reason is to help combat piracy. Nowadays everyone gets their music online, legally or illegaly, so if one person is buying an album off the shelf then they know that that is one less person illegaly downloading the songs.

Buying a digipak(s) will show the growth of an artist. Say you've been collecting albums from an artist since their first album, you can see their transformatin trough their albums. For instance, Beyonce has released four albums and you can see her growth through her albums.





3. Why are ancillary products to the industry/artist?

Ancillary products (adverts and digipaks) are important because they are probably the easiest way to expose the artist. Without the advert in a magazine, on the bus or train or a poster no-one will know about the product. An advert will tell you if the album is good, it will show you what the album looks like, it could tell inform you of a tour (if there is one) etc. Theres so much information an advert can hold and its an easy way to reach out to the people.