A SEMIOTIC EVALUATION OF COVER IMAGES OF THE TEN MOST HELD TURKISH POP MUSIC ON THE 2021 SPOTIFY LIST

Abstract

Semiotics, or semiotics as it is commonly known, is an interdisciplinary research field that analyses the sign strings of studies belonging to many fields such as music, sociology and linguistics. The science of semiotics, which has both a principled and free movement environment due to its multidisciplinary structure, has explained objects, figures and situations in this way by revealing the meaning and establishing a connection with the place of that meaning in society. Today, semiotics, which makes metaphorical analyses of various disciplinary fields such as literature, art, music and cinema and has a wide range as a field of study, has been an important communication tool in this sense. Among these fields, especially in music, graphical designs used in the creation of album covers, concert posters and posters have an important role in conveying the message that the musical product wants to convey. The objects and symbols used in these digital designs that support the works visually have a strong effect that will create images in the memories when combined with the message of the musical piece. With these digital designs, it is possible to say that album covers have an important semiotic place in the field of pop music as in other fields of music. In this sense, semiotics aims to show other meanings behind what is seen when the elements in question are evaluated. Founded on 23 April 2006 in Sweden, Spotify, a podcast service that provides data flow in music, has become the most widely used application among social media applications today and has become an intermediary for the audience to access music. Within the scope of the purpose of the study, the cover visuals were evaluated semiotically in terms of elements such as writing styles, colour preferences, use of figures and objects. In the study, whose method was determined according to Saussure's classification of signifier and signified, the cover images of the ten most listened songs in the field of Turkish pop music in the Spotify 2021 list were analysed in tables. The cover images in the study were analysed in terms of whether the title and graphic design are compatible with each other and the results were evaluated and presented. In the light of the evaluations made, it was concluded that some of the album covers were compatible with the name of the album and some were not.