The Music Industry

Traditionally, record labels own the music that is released. It is the aim of the artist to help promote and help to sell the maximum number of albums as possible.

Late 70’s – 90’s > the big six

Late 90’s > the big five

2004 > big four (Universal, Emi, Warner, Sony)

2012 > big three (Universal, Warner and Sony) Emi and Universal’s £1.9billion deal

Today, we have the big 3 – Sony, Warner and Universal.

The current situation that the record companies are witnessing is the fall in sales and fall in profit. There has been a shift in consumers as they are now more active in consumption of music, the commercialisation of the internet has introduced new places to buy and download music from and consumers can hear singles on radio etc.  

Traditionally, music videos were to sell a single and make large profits for the record company but music videos today are extremely easy to access from the internet and YouTube allow free access for the fans and allow them to watch it whenever, however and wherever they want to. Music videos are important for the industry as it promotes the artist and the song and sells the single. It also allows the fans to see their favourite artist perform the single and creates a fundamental connection between the artist and their fans. However, there has been such an increasing fall in sales and profit as a result of illegal downloads and other ways of consuming a single.

Current trends:

Itunes – 13% of download cost

Amazon MP3 – legal downloads/convenient and cheap

Illegal downloads – 67 in UK services

"The five worst offending nations (with artist) in the past six months were:"

1: United States, 96,868,398 total shares (most for Drake)

2: United Kingdom 43,314,568 total shares (Ed Sheeran)

3: Italy 33,226,258 total shares (Laura Pausini)

4: Canada 23,953,053 total shares (Kanye West)

5: Brazil 19,677,596 total shares (Billy Van)