disintegrate

rate

Ok, so for my corporate website project I have to redo the whole website of Sony BMG Malaysia [ http://www.sonybmg.com.my/ ] daymmnn it's a boring website. I mean, for SONY BMG?!?How could they DO such a thing for the website. tsk tsk. Anyways, here's my client's competitors analysis. the first one out is;

Virgin Records [www.virginrecords.com/ ]

Virgin Records are also a record label some what similar to EMI. They have their own sets of artists under them as they are a recording label and will then distribute their music and promote the artists to the bigger market.

Based on the design of the website, it has a clean cut feeling and seems a very neat arrangement of information especially in their Home Page. Things can be clearly seen in the website as there are less text and a nice and simple use of images with minimal text. They obviously used alot of red throughout the website to further emphasize the corporate colour of the company, which in my opinion there is TOO MUCH use of it especially as a background colour. The colour is too straining to the user's eye. What they should have done is either a darker shade of red or a more neutral colour to balance it and not make it too red. However, I like the change of images they put in the center in the Home Page,which somehow killed off the straining of the red colour.

The content that they have in their websites are 'news', 'artists', 'releases', 'appearances', 'music+videos' and 'free stuff'.

The layout of the 'Artists' page is quite different compared to the other competitors. Instead of putting the various artists images on the page, they have instead placed the artists name in a A to Z position, and beside it include an XML feed to the artists latest news,tours,link to their own site and user can also sign up to the artist newsletter. This will then be easier for user to browse through the artist that they want and get the information about them easily in a simple click.

When the user explores into the 'Releases' section, that is where they can find the latest releases of albums from the various artists and they have a button for them to click and purchase their album. Instead of them waiting for the delivery of the artist's album to appear on their doorsteps, in Virgin Records, they would purchase the album though ITunes. This has an advantage and disadvantage. In a way, they have moved along with the trend of selling the mp3s of the album to the user, but the bad thing is that the user wont have a solid copy of it and it gives a different feeling towards to the user depending on the person itself.

Unlike EMI records where the user will be lead to a different window opening up to their special youtube page, Virgin Records have instead built-in their own section of playing music and videos of their artist in their website. The user have the option of playing the audio,video or just to purchase the artists song of their likes.

Home Page

Artist Page

Mailing List Pop-up

Releases Page

Music & Videos