This is a home page of the Ed Sheeran website (http://edsheeran.com/) who is a vastly rising star of music at the moment. He is a young, popular artist who is up to date with all social media sites and has huge inputs on his work and advertising etc. Therefore, i thought who better to model my home page around than his own. With various links, pictures and videos he created an effective and hugely viewed page for fans to buy from, gain information from and much more.
Text- On this page there is minimal text which relates to his target audience of an ever evolving teenage to early twenties age group who depend on social media to keep in touch with the world and like to visibly see things and not read tons of text on a page.This allows young visitors to navigate through the page easily and use media which is scattered around the page offering them a chance to see and hear his work. And as a standard website must there is a Terms and conditions, Privacy policy and help and support centre link along with the name of the record label he's with giving acknowledgement to it. There is a clear black/grey and white colour scheme on this page which makes the focus completely the content of the site which works really well and allows easy reading while maintaining a media focus.
Social Media- A significant focus to this page is the social media aspect of things which reflects the globalisation of music in modern times and shows that the artist acknowledges this and has a row of social media links at the top of the page under 'Ed Sheeran'. The links include My space, Twitter, Facebook, You tube, sound cloud and an audio player with a link to buy a track of his after listening to the preview. These are all the biggest sites on the internet in terms of social media which contain all of his fans across all networks. Thsi allows them all to come together and share their interest in music. Again creating this idea of bringing together the globalisation of his music into one place for all to share.
Advertising- Not only is Ed Sheeran promoting himself but other artists and products by not only using them in videos which you can watch but by mentioning or linking someones material or name on Twitter, Facebook or even just the website somewhere. For example, he tweeted Ryan Keen's name and posted a link to his new music video on the internet which is already being viewed by many and talked about for it's brilliant animations in the video and his singing ability. Predominantly of course though, Ed Sheeran promotes himself as it is his home page and almost the central point to him as a musician outsourcing his products, music and most importantly his name to millions around the world. With an online shop linked to the page he can not only earn money through merchandise but through advertising products on the site. He advertises his new album in the top right corner and provides a link to buy or view the price of it. He's almost encouraging you to go and have a look by putting things all over his page with the option to buy. With the page having live updates of news regarding Ed, you can flick to any program's he's appearing on or visit anywhere he is going to be creating a base almost for him.
Layout- One thing i immediately noticed with Ed Sheeran's home page was the amount of blank space and how simply it was laid out. This simple design meant everything was easy to find and although rather bare looking in parts, it served its purpose very well and contained everything it needed to be successful. One very effective feature was the video you immediately notice which is in fact a gallery of various music videos he had which you can flick through and play just like on You tube. Also, to the right hand side is all of the social media related parts and the left is more standard of a website with the list of different pages to navigate through. On every area you look there's links to promotional pages whether it;s buying merchandise, CD's or signing up to his pages. The page is clearly split into three columns of information, the left being navigation dominated, the central a live update of his news in general and on Twitter and the right hand side being totally promotional to him as an artist whilst promoting companies such as HMV, Play,com, Amazon and iTunes etc. through synergy.
Audience specific- This website has the option of being displayed in 7 languages. 'English', 'American', 'French', 'German', 'Dutch', 'Australian' and 'Rest of the world'. This multi lingual platform is a representative of how well Sheeran has done and how many links and what an international image he now has. This is also giving all consumers of his products and image a chance to be involved with this despite being from different countries.The amount of media and social media on the page shows how relatable his page and him as an artist is to his student and teenager predominant fan base who will all use either Facebook or Twitter and in a lot of cases, both. This allows Ed Sheeran the ability to promote all sorts of things to do with his name through other links around the page and the chance to 'Like' him on Facebook and 'Follow' him on Twitter.
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