Myspace Research Task

Death Cab For Cutie - Official Website
Url: http://www.deathcabforcutie.com/
Genre: Indie (American)/Alternative
Country of Origin: America (Seattle)
The bands official website is a flash layout with moving images and sections. The homepage is arranged in a circle around their band's name in the middle. There are links at the top and the bottom to safeguard against the crashing of the flash layout (a common occurence on such programs as the shoddy Internet Explorer). The main sections which are shown in the flash portion of the homepage are: Photos, Music, Videos, Fan Club, Tour Dates, Merch Store, News (with a live feed), Mailing List. The colour scheme is all white, oranges and greys, but very soft colours. This is a clear signifier of the genre of the music giving a very calm feel to the website rather than harsh contrasting colours associated more with heavier music. The photos are on a slideshow reel, with a calm dissolve between them. Each section has a small animation when you hover over it to make interesting visuals while browsing the site. If you roll over the bugles, they play a little jingle.
Each individual section of the site is made on a standard layout, with a cream background on the text boxes/link boxes etc, over a white main page background. The links at the top and the bottom stay the same and there is a big link back to their homepage in the top left. The colour scheme is still oranges/greys/white with the addition of the cream text boxes. These pages are a lot more simple than the extravagent homepage.
The website appeals to their audience by giving the standard expectations of music, videos, information, etc. The website stays key to the bands iconography and style of artwork from their albums therefore creating a synergy between their music and brand image.

UnderOath - Official Website
Url: http://www.underoath777.com/
Genre: Alternative/Post Hardcore
Country of Origin: America (Florida)
The band's official website is a flash layout based around the bands most recent album "Lost in the Sound of Separation". At a first glance I was disappointed thinking it very badly designed but soon discovered the links pull you flying across the screen to a different island in the background design where the section of the website is. It is all very arty and big bold colours representing the contrast of their musical style to the norm. The sections from the main flash layout are: NEWS, SHOWS, BAND, MUSIC, MEDIA, PHOTOS, JOURNAL, LINKS, CONTACT, eNEWS, MERCH. From this I can see similarities between their website and Death Cab's, giving a sense that audiences expect certain things on a band website and it is their job to deliver this. All the media is part of the flash layout so photos pop out and videos are embedded to the website. This is good as you don't need to leave the page to see any of their material. Obvious links are too their myspace and facebook page.
The band have chosen to use artwork from their current touring album "Lost in the Sound of Separation" for the site so it is a direct link to the bands brand image, easy for an audience to associate with the band as it is nothing different from what the fans expect of them. The bands record label is hardly mentioned or visible through the site, other than in the links section. This can be seen as a sign of independence from the bands label.

Bring Me The Horizon - Myspace Page
Url: http://www.myspace.com/bmth/
Genre: Metalcore/Black Metal
Country of Origin: England (Sheffield)
Straight away as we go onto BMTH's myspace page we see a huge different in genre signifiers from the previous two websites. The layout is almost all white, green and black with a background which is very grainy and harsh, looking like a worn down wall. The first thing we see is the cover art for the bands most recent album, depicting a girl holding some guts (not quite as sweet and calm as DCFC's website). This is showing the gore associated with this genre of music and hence why they used it for their album art (with an album called "Suicide Season" what can you expect). The myspace layout is using DIV codes to cover up the traditional layout and rearrange it how they want it. The music player is still in its usual place but all the info on the left hand side has been replaced with graphic designs, like photos of the band members, links to buy their albums, a link to the merch store, what equipment they use, and their most recent magazine cover. Underneath this is all their contact information very neatly presented. Most of this is a good example of marketing, with clear showing off of their endorsements while shoving all available band goods in your face.
The right hand side covers their tour dates, twitter updates, videos and the standard myspace layout of top friends and comments. There are also adverts to join their street team and to do with promotion packages. Their top friend is "Drop Dead", vocalist Oli Sykes own clothing brand, basically more band merch but keeping a direct link with them for fans.
This type of music and the scene that follows it are largely associated with myspace hence their main website being a myspace page. It is very simply laid out and the colour schemes and artwork follows all signifiers of the genre, making them a very fan friendly band. The twitter feed makes fans feel directly linked to the band.


I chose these 3 sites as they all have their various contrasting factors but all have very big similarities that are obviously expected from a band website these days, like song players, music videos, news feeds and tour dates. We should keep these sort of things in mind when creating our myspace page to make it as authentic and marketable as possible.