When Ralph met the Scream

It really wasn’t that long ago that selling records relied on positive word of mouth and perhaps a radical sleeve design. Queuing up at the local Our Price, HMV, or Woolworths to take receipt of that latest vinyl cut was a joyous occasion that every fan looked forward to. Grasping a cardboard-clad piece of grooved plastic felt great, smelt great, and just meant something inherently beautiful even before the needle was applied. Men would arrange them in specially fashioned hi-fi cabinets, alphabetically stacking them and reminiscing to any mildly interested victims about exactly how each purchase signposted their lives. Then digital came along and equally ruined and enhanced the party with its big binary-based boots. Now, it’s really easy here to get so blinded by nostalgia that the obvious improvements over sound quality and replay value that CDs, Mini Discs, MP3s and DVDs have provided has robbed us of “analogue warmth” or “scratchy charm” because that is just nonsense. But perhaps the saddest side-effects is that the traditional magic in buying and collecting music has been eroded by the very things that are already hitting record companies, and more importantly their artists, in the pocket. While modern digital technology has indeed widened audiences via the ease of reproduction and distribution, it has changed the mindset of music fans and yielded piracy at epidemic levels. On the flip side, the argument is that the music industry has been slow and arrogant in its ability to harness the new technology or offer more value into publishing and packaging its product. Perhaps it’s high time us punters saw a bit more innovation from record labels and maybe, just maybe, the Internet has a role in restoring some of that aforementioned lost magic. This month’s special Behind The Scenes represents a case study for a project that not only fuels such a debate, but also helps us to investigate how far similar initiatives are going to bridge the gap between fan and band. Ralph, known as DS.Emotion until very recently, is a London-based design agency that has an enviable reputation for whipping up rocking domains for many of the UK’s hottest pop acts. Indeed Web Designer has previously profiled its work for Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, and Leeds six-piece 10,000 Things. Since then it’s completed the .co.uk arm of Christina Aguilera’s official online empire and, more excitingly for indie fans, the promotional home page for Primal Scream’s Riot City Blues LP.

We grill the Ralph design team on exactly how the project came together and whether success has matched the band’s expectations

Having worked on similar projects previously, Ralph has something of a track record in building sites for musical artists. What is it that either makes you particularly skilled in this area or draws you to take on such projects?
Before we worked with Franz Ferdinand we had to work quite hard to get projects out of the music labels as they obviously like to see similar industry experience in your portfolio. The projects are fun for our team to take on and help raise our profile within the industry. We’re getting a lot of interest in the skills we have developed for creating Flash video players.

How does a project such as www.primalscream.netcome about and how was Ralph approached regarding taking it on?
The band have been long overdue a proper official web presence. We have a relationship with SonyBMG so they asked us if we’d be willing to pitch our creative ideas for the site.

Does a band like Primal Scream ever offer ideas or requirements for what their site should have or is it something you have to thrash out with the record label?
Primal Scream are a bit more old-school in their approach to the web and so don’t get involved in the site themselves too much, we deal with their record label for this. Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs are very involved with their sites however.

What kind of total production time does a site like www.primalscream.net take to put together, and what sort of design team is involved?
We usually don’t have long to do sites such as Primal Scream and Christina Aguilera (www.christinamusic.co.uk), we’re lucky to get over two weeks most of the time.

The site features a special Flash video player that can have promos uploaded and added in due course. Was this built specifically for the Primal Scream project and what particular technical issues were encountered here?
At the time we developed the Primal Scream video player there was not a streaming server in place, so it had to start playing the video without too much of a wait time for the users. With every site we do we are upgrading the video player. Primal Scream has just had an audio player added into it, for example.

In your experience, are you finding that record labels are focusing in on and demanding more from online content as a way of bringing customers back into the overall experience of actually buying records again?
They realise that digital channels are a great way to build and strengthen the link between musicians and their fans. The uptake of digital purchasing is integral to this relationship and this opportunity is what the labels are focusing on.

How effective has the Primal Scream site been in raising interest in the band’s latest record? How many visitor hits has it had? What has user feedback been like?
It’s too early to talk about figures for traffic, but feedback has been that an official presence was long overdue. And the people we’ve spoken to love the simplicity of the site.