Over the past decade there has been a significant change in the music industry. In class we looked at how the music industry was in the past including the production side of it, the distribution side of the music industry and also the exchange side. We then compared it to how the music industry is now.
Here is some of the major difference’s that has happened in the music industry that we discussed in class
In the 1970’s the industry was dominated by ‘the big 6’. Since the 70’s ‘the big 6’ changed into ‘the big 4’ with Sony music and BMG emerging in 2004. The big 4 right now is Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, EMI Group and also Warner Music Group.
The reason these are the big 4 is due to the fact that they all own smaller, subsidiary labels that specialise in different genres which enable the Big 4 to dominate most markets.
For example Sony Music Entertainment has acts of all different genres:
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- Britney Spears - Pop
- Beyonce – R&B
- Pitbull – Hip Hop
- Foo Fighters – Alternative Rock
- Bullet For My Valentine – Metal
Throughout the years the role of music videos has changed.
The traditional role of the music video was to promote the artist’s latest single so that the audience will want to buy the single and also the album of the artist. Also the traditional was to promote videos was by airing songs on channels such as MTV in form of play lists.
Although this was the way music was promoted before it has now become more different. With sites such as YouTube giving the chance for fans to access songs on demand for free. Nowadays music videos struggle to have the same impact on record sales which has resulted to most music videos revealing and engage new as well as old fans. Also music videos are now used to try convincing the viewers to see the artist/band perform live; this is because the record labels make the most money from concerts.
As well as showing music videos on music channels and sites such as YouTube artists can get more popularity by the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace as well as others. With people sharing music videos on their profiles, more people can see the artist’s music video and also possibly become a fan of them.
Also away from social networking sites artists can become independent and sell their music on their own websites. A good example of this is Radiohead. Radiohead used a dishonest sphere approach where they let the fans decide how much they would want to give for their album Rainbow. Also they sold their album Kings of Limbs for £6.
In the UK alone there are 67 legal music download services with the likes of ITunes, Amazon as well as many more.
Although there are many options to where to download from legally, 75% of all downloads in the UK are illegal. 1.2 billion Illegal downloads were done in the UK in the year 2010 with the likes of YouTube converter being so simple to reach. This is having a massive impact on how record labels are making money which results them in selling more merchandise products to keep money coming in.
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