It was followed soon after, in February 1994, by PAMS' first disc for a major rock act, INXS's Make my Video. As its title suggests, this project specifically inscribed and exploited the music CD-Rom's reliance on music video conventions as its raison d'etre. The disc basically offers the user the opportunity to try and put together a set of images (eg 'video babes' playing pool, stereotypical teenage characters such as the 'nerd', 'surfer dude' etc.) to form a complete visual track for one of three audio-tracks included on the CD-Rom.
Despite considerable publicity, Make my Video did little to stimulate critical or market interest in the format due to its cliched content and limited nature of its interactive properties. What was perhaps most unfortunate about the disc was that it managed to perpetuate and reinforce the most limited and cliched of music video styles and conventions within a new form. A review in Rolling Stone (Australia), summed up the general response to Make My Video by describing it as "an exercise in limited creativity thinly disguised as a video game"; and added that "MTV has nothing to fear" (Humphries: 26).
Since these early pilot projects, PAMS have begun to produce music CD-Roms using standard software packages - known as 'shells' - to 'insert' specific content into. This approach allows producers to place graphics, music/sound score, video extracts, text etc. into a functional shell without their having to understand the technology or how to design it. The approach also allows for dramatic reductions in the time and cost of producing titles. PAMS designer Mike Fronzac likens it to "buying a project [ie kit] home rather than a one off" 11. The cost for a standard shell project at PAMS currently starts at $10,000 but the costs rise dramatically if a custom shell is required.
Although $10,000 is a relatively high production cost for the Australian music industry - being equivalent to a medium-high budget music video production 12 - this has not been the only factor militating against Australian record companies' investment in the medium to date. Perhaps the most relevant factor has been the perception that CD-Rom playback equipment has not yet penetrated the popular music purchasing market to such an extent as to allow music CD-Roms to sell enough to cover production costs. Such considerations even affected those willing to invest in the production of the software itself. Icehouse and EMI/Massive, for example, backed the interactive audio-visual program produced for Icehouse for their Big Wheel release but decided against releasing it as a CD-Rom. The interactive software was instead released in a composite format termed a 'digipack' - a standard audio CD with an added floppy disc containing text, graphics and audio channels. This interim-format product met with little public success however and this arrangement is unlikely to be repeated given the significant increase in CD-Rom hardware distribution in the latter half of 1994.
c. GF4'S Sooner Or Later
PAMS' most significant disc to date, and one which used the standard shell option as its basis, was Sooner or Later, their CD-Rom for GF4 . Sooner or Later was produced as the focus of a re-launch of an Australian female vocal group previously known as Girlfriend (with the "4" in GF4 acknowledging that Girlfriend lost their fifth member [and lead singer] Robyn Loau to a solo career in mid-1994). The CD-Rom release and band's name change were marketing strategies intended to change the image of the new four member line-up, allowing them to target an older, more sophisticated audience than the young teenage female market the previous line-up had appealed to. Designed by Sydney talent school proprietor and show business entrepreneur Janice Breen as "a female version of New Kids on the Block" 13, and launched with a video for their first single Take It From Me (1992) which was produced with the brief of making the act look like "Amy Grant meets early Kylie - absolute virgins" 14 ; the act were popular in 1992-3, before their success tailed off in late 1993/early 1994. In a move directly modelled on Kylie Minogue's shift of image from teen star to Madonna-esque dance culture icon in the period 1992-3; Sooner or Later attempted to give the band and older, more sophisticated, sexier (though still 'tasteful'), and, somewhat ironically, 'self-controlled' image 15. This image was also developed to cater for one of the key overseas markets for the group identified by their record company BMG (Australia) - Japan/South East Asia (a region previously tested with brief promotional tours by the former line-up in 1993.)
The CD-Rom was produced using a custom shell and, including production of the music video (which was also screened on TV in the usual manner), cost BMG (Australia) under $50,000 to produce 16 - a cost which represented something of a gamble for the company, even for a semi-established act. According to Karen Seaton, Australian marketing co-ordinator for BMG, the company used GF4 as a test case to evaluate the efficiency of CD-Roms as a marketing devices; seeing CD-Rom - and its new, sophisticated image as a technology - as the perfect format for (re-)launching GF4. The gamble paid off however, with the CD-Rom single charting (as an 'audio release') in the Australian singles; the video receiving frequent airplay; the CD-Rom securing wide press coverage; and GF4 rapidly securing a new product image for themselves. The test case of Sooner Or Later was so successful that BMG (Australia) have now established their own interactive marketing department - Ariola Interactive Entertainment - and are currently developing concepts for future CD-Rom products. The first of these, intended for mid-1995 release, are likely to be for the established Australian chart rock acts the Divinyls and Boom Crash Opera.
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