Analysis Blog Entry 3 – Conclusion

Through analyzing my online media usage, I now see where I post and distribute the most content online. Facebook and Instagram are the primary services in which I post content, as I’m sure the same is with many people in the class. However for the basis of my essay, I’ve decided to focus on the authorship and distribution of my content I deliver under my events brand ‘SHIFT’ and my DJ persona ‘Connor Mac’. I’m choosing to do this as I feel the content related to these personas is more productive and interesting than my day to day activities on Facebook and Instagram. In my essay I’ll be focusing on a number of platforms and the way in which I use them to post and share content, and the way that I try to expand my reach to an audience through means of cross-platform distribution and tagging. To further break this down, I’ll be looking at the way I post original content on SoundCloud and then the means I use to distribute it in regard to my DJ persona. As for the way I market my ‘SHIFT’ brand, I will look at the way I use Facebook to widen my organic audience through distribution methods such as inviting friends to events and sharing my brand related content via my personal Facebook account.

Analysis Blog Entry 2 – Evaluation

If I were to break down my online media usage, I would break it down into four categories: professional; recreational; social; and educational. During my week in which I documented my usage, patterns began to emerge and I began to clearly see how much time I spent on each ‘category’ of media usage. Firstly, my social media usage was easily the most significant, with it having my full attention from the moment I woke up each morning. For most people in my generation, I would say that this is pretty customary, however it is not a habit that I am fully comfortable with as I believe that excessive in it’s nature. The next highest percentage of my online media usage distribution would be taken up by my ‘professional’ usage. My ‘professional’ media usage is that which I would associate with my DJ and music production career. All of the time that I spend on sites such as SoundCloud and Beatport looking for new music is time that I would consider used well, even if it is a large portion of my time. I also would categorise the time I spend watching tutorials/demonstrations on YouTube and other sites regarding music production to fall under the ‘professional’ category, but I think it was also somewhat crossover into the ‘educational’ category. I would then argue that my educational and recreational media usage are pretty much even, with my educational usage being that directly connected to my tertiary education, and my recreational being anything that doesn’t fit into the other three categories – such as online shopping or watching Netflix.

Analysis Blog Entry 1 – Evidence

 As a part of my Networked Media elective, I was required to document my online media usage daily for a week. During this week, my usage was pretty much how I assumed it would be. I used popular social media and communication apps such as Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, and Messenger quite frequently on a daily basis, checking all accounts first thing in the morning and then regularly using them throughout the day whenever I got time. I also used online music services like SoundCloud and Beatport on a daily basis, either to browse my streams for new music, or to upload original content. I used WordPress daily to post content to my blog, as this was the platform I used to display these blog posts. On the final day of documentation, I also created a new WordPress page for another subject at university, this one being quite static in the way it looks and operates in comparison to my blog page. 

Online Media Usage – Day 7

What?

I didn’t use social media a whole lot today as I had lots of homework to do for uni. In the morning, I went about my social media routine as usual – checked all my accounts and messages and then tagged a few friends in some videos and stuff like that. I used my work email account to check for invoices and paid a couple of them using online banking on my phone. The most significant task I completed today using online media was the creation of a new WordPress site as part of an assessment for another subject. The site acts as a portfolio of all of my works in the music industry so far, and has been given to us as an assessment for the purpose of being able to use it after graduation to help us find jobs.

How?

While logged into my WordPress account, I selected the ‘add new site’ button and created a new site. With my new site, it took quite a bit of formatting until I was happy with it’s layout, as I didn’t want to actually have the site looking like a blog site, but rather just a standard webpage with static qualities. The page contains a home page and then three sub-pages as part of the criteria: a resume page; an audio/visual portfolio page; and a ‘me in a minute’ page. I used some of the skills we learnt in this class to embed content into the pages such as SoundCloud content, a video I uploaded to YouTube and some photos.

Why?

I made the website as it was required to be done as part of my assessment. However, I decided to use some of the skills that we had learnt in Networked Media to add some flare to the page in the hope of making it look more professional thus getting me a higher grade on the assessment.

You can check out the page at https://connormcclellandsite.wordpress.com/

Online Media Usage: Day 6

What?

My online media usage today was significantly less than any other day I have reported so far, as I had work from 7am through until 5pm, and then went out for dinner at 7pm. I checked my social media accounts briefly throughout the day; once in the morning before work, once during my lunch break and once when I got home from dinner. I just jumped into bed now though and am about to watch the newest episode of ‘Imposters’ with my girlfriend, a tv series I mentioned in a previous post. I also reckon I will take a SnapChat to show my friends that I am watching it, because I haven’t posted anything on SnapChat today and I like to put something up at least once a day

How?

This particular series is only legally available on Stan online. I say ‘legally’ because I’m sure there’s websites where you can watch it for free illegally, such as putlocker.com, however seeing as I am a 100% law abiding citizen I would never dream of doing such illegal activities. I used my girlfriends ChromeCast device to stream the show Stan on her iPad to her television. In terms of the SnapChat post I plan on uploading, I will take a photo inside the app of the television with the show playing, and possibly use the stickers feature on the app to add some illustrations to the picture as well to make it look more fun.

Why?

I use Stan because it’s one of the most easily accessible online streaming services for television and film, and I don’t have to pay for the account because my girlfriend does so that’s a big bonus. As for the SnapChat, the reason I’m taking a photo of what I’m doing is because I’m wanting to show my friends the show for two reasons. One of them is simply to let my friends know what I’m doing, as that seems to be something that everyone does nowadays, no matter how unimportant or routine the activity is, for some reason people just love sharing what they’re doing now. The other reason is that I’m hoping that somebody else who is watching the show will see my post and hopefully we will then be able to talk about it together and socialise over a common interest.

Online Media Usage – Day 5

What?

This morning my social media presence was a lot stronger than yesterdays. It’s only 3.44pm however so far I’ve posted a status to Facebook, uploaded an EP to my secondary SoundCloud page, and then shared that to Facebook too. On top of that I also went about my daily social media activity, responding to messages on iMessage and Facebook Messenger and checking notifications on SnapChat, Instagram and Facebook. For this post I’ll focus on the EP I uploaded to SoundCloud as I feel this was the most important task I completed online today. The EP was an 8-track EP consisting of 7 original tracks and 1 official remix. It was completed in 2014 under my persona ‘Nylender’, however I just never got around to uploading it online anywhere as I didn’t continue with that project much longer after I’d finished the EP

How?

The files sitting on my computer were in .m4a format, and while I would have preferred to upload the songs in a loseless format such as .wav, I couldn’t find them on my computer. I had to create a new account to upload these songs as they are a very different style to what I produce now and I didn’t want to have them on my current account, so I had to create a new SoundCloud account in order to upload them. Once I had done that, I clicked the ‘upload’ link on the top right hand side of the screen and then chose to upload a playlist. I included the 8 songs in this playlist, and then wrote a little bio about the EP while it was uploading, as well as uploaded album artwork and tagged a genre for the EP. Once the EP had fully uploaded, I copied and pasted the link into a Facebook status to share it.

Why?

I uploaded this onto SoundCloud as I’d meant to upload it many times before but just not gotten around to it. As I was doing homework on my laptop, one of the tracks off the EP came up on shuffle in iTunes and I decided that it was finally time to publish it. I had planned on publishing it later when more people were online, however it’s not really a project where I’m too fussed about how much attention it will get, more just something I had to upload because I’d been putting it off for so long.

Online Media Usage – Day 4

What?

Today my social media usage was noticeably less than usual, as I spent the day at uni and my phone died while I was there. In the morning, I checked all my social media accounts and replied to any messages I had, and then left to go to uni on the train. On the train I was on my phone and decided to do a google search, asking the search engine what new series were good on Stan at the moment as me and my girlfriend recently just finished the series we were watching. I ended up stumbling across a show called ‘Imposters’ that caught my eye, not only because of what it was about but because the producers release a new episode each week and I thought that would be a good way to watch the show.

How?

Seeing as I did not publish anything on social media today, I’ll instead focus on how I distributed this information I got. Once I had found the show online, I took a screenshot of it on my phone and then used iMessage to send it through to my girlfriend. She then messaged me asking what it was about so I sent her the link to the IMDB page for it via iMessage also.

Why?

I sent this photo to communicate that it was something I was interested in watching and to share the knowledge I had recently gained about with with my girlfriend. The reason I used iMessage is whenever I contact her it’s usually either via a call or an iMessage so it’s just what I unconsciously use when going to message her. I used Google to look up the show as it’s usually always open on at least one tab on ‘Safari’ on my phone and it’s the search engine that I’ve always used. I then sent the link for IMDB as I know that that is a trustworthy and popular movie database.

Online Media Usage: Day 3

What?

Today, my social media usage was largely as routine as it was any other day. Check all of my social media accounts in the morning, and then throughout the day, occasionally check them to see what notifications I have. I found myself on using Facebook Messenger quite a lot today, as I had plans with several different people and for me Facebook is the easiest way to communicate with my friends. During the day, I played a DJ set at at a rooftop open air style venue in Brunswick, and decided to video a part of the set I was playing and upload it to Instagram.

How?

I took the video on my iPhone 5s, and then uploaded it to Instagram. When uploading, I made sure to tag the group running the event (Primitive People) in my description of the video, and also ‘checked in’ at the venue, Bimbos Deluxe. I applied a filter to the video within Instagram. Usually I use another app called ‘VSCO Cam’ on my phone to apply filters as I believe they look nicer, however I thought that applying a filter to a one minute video and then exporting it to my phone in HD might take a little while so I decided against it.

Why?

The main reason I uploaded this video on Instagram is pretty simple – I hadn’t uploaded anything for quite a while. In hindsight as I reflect on it though, I guess you could say that uploading the video of the gig at which I was playing to an extent was promotion not only for myself as an artist but also for the group who were putting on the day party. By tagging their Instagram page in the caption for the video, I was also promoting their brand in a way that widened the potential audience to not only their followers but to mine also.

*Note: There is no available link to the video as my Instagram account is set to private due to personal preference.

 

Online Media Usage: Day 2

What?

I didn’t use my phone until the early evening today as I was away camping and there was no reception at the spot that I was at. Upon getting home, I did my usual routine on my phone, looking at new notifications across Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, and then replied to iMessage’s and Facebook messages. Then, on Facebook, I made a post on my timeline  about a techno collectives day party that I’m djing at tomorrow. The post made use of some of Facebook’s in-post functions like tagging friends and sharing a link (in this case, the link to the event page on Facebook). I made a decision to post this status at this particular time (6.45pm) because in my experience it’s a good time of the night to get a good response to your posts, as most people, within my social demographic at least, seem to be on their phone at this time on a Saturday night.

How?

The post that I created started by me ‘sharing’ the event page for the gig I’m playing at. Once I’d chosen to ‘share to my wall’, I was then asked to write an accompanying body of text for the post. In this body of text, I announced what time my set would be and some of the specials on for the day ($4 pizzas). After writing this text, the post could have been posted and looked fine, but I wanted to add more to it in an effort to draw more attention to it. I made sure to attach hyperlinks to all possible entities in the post, so that they would receive a notification as soon as I posted the status. Then, I tagged friends in the post who I thought it would be appropriate to tag, that being the organisers of the event and the other DJs playing at it so that they too would receive a notification upon posting the status. This means that people who are friends with these people would see that they have been tagged in my post, helping it reach a wider audience than my spread alone would be able to cover.

Why?

I posted this status for two reasons. The first reason is that as a DJ of the event it is my responsibility to try and get the word out about the party and to draw in a crowd. By putting up this status, all of my friends plus more can see that the event is on and this will hopefully bring in some people to the party. The second reason I posted this was because it also is a great way to advertise myself as an artist. By posting my gigs and keeping people up to date with what I’m doing, it gives people who want to see me play an insight into where I’ll be spending my weekend, and it also shows potential bookers that I’m out playing gigs and doing my bit for the industry.