Website Research

Website Research...

Knowing that I will have to make a website this year for my made up artist, It seems to be a good idea to look at some other well established artist sites, in order to see the technical and symbolic conventions.

I started by looking at the Red Hot Chili Peppers website. It definitely was not the website I expected from the British rock band. On opening the site you see a video of bees working within a hive. However around this video there are bold advertisements for new music videos, new album releases and tour dates. Only when you scroll to the very bottom do you finally see the band themselves.

In general the website has everything you'd expect to see, just laid out in an artistic fashion. Whether it looks like a rock band website is debatable, but from the rural photos you gain a sense that the site isn't promoting an electric, or rap group.

Next I looked at Kaytranada's website, a lone music producer who makes electronic beats for a younger audience. The site is easily recognisable to a Kaytranada fan, with the same artwork as seen on his album cover for '99.9%' The website is clean, simple and contains everything you'd expect from an artists site. However one thing interests me. There is a mini-game you can play on the site using all the same art style which, if you complete it, you earn yourself a bonus track not released on the original album list. This is a very simple and clever way in my opinion to include some participatory culture within the album and build some interest around it.

Homepage

The mini-game loading screen

Overall both sites contain the same content, just displayed in different ways. The Red Hot Chili Pepper's site is more in your face, with lots of visuals that catch your eye and keep you interested. Kaytranada's site is cleaner, with bright 'doodles' on a plain black background. This almost childish design gives the album a homemade style. In my opinion this makes it the more successful website, as internet users nowadays have a much lower attention span when it comes to taking on board information. The game helps keep the audience on the page longer, gets them interested in the album, and then they're more likely to look at tour dates and new songs.