Research - The Music Industry

Research – the Music Industry

There have been many significant changes in the music industry.

PRODUCTION

Then:

Actual instruments were used when recording music in the studio

Now:

Artificial instruments are digitally added

Music can be created anywhere, on computers, IPods, phones etc.

DISTRIBUTION

Then:

Music is distributed through the Radio with well known presenters such as Tim Westwood who is known for promoting new music.

Advertising is used to up sell music

Word of mouth

People access music through cassette players and CD players

Now:

People can access music through the internet on iTunes, IPods, MP3 players

YouTube channels become popular

Music is streamed and shared on YouTube channels such as SBTV.

EXCHANGE

Then:
Music was making a lot more money due to the purchase of the physical form of music e.g. CDs.

Now:

There is a huge loss of money as music is being illegally downloaded, ¾ of music downloaded is illegal. Although there is some opportunities to download legally.

Music videos are of a great importance to both fans and the industry. Fans enjoy seeing the artist’s performance in their videos and in general looking at the artist. Videos appeal to audiences as they are exciting, visual and a way of promoting the song as they can be accessed from the internet on demand. Music videos are important to the industry as they help to up sell the artists music. Singles are more likely to be successful if they have a video of them as they are available everywhere and more memorable. Successful music videos can go viral on the internet whereby people are continually sharing them with each other through social networking sites and word of mouth whereby the song becomes extremely successful and well known, thus promoting the artist.

OK Go by Here It Goes Again is an example of a video that went viral a few years ago, the simplicity and the unique style of the video caused it to be a great hit worldwide. Another example of a recent video that went viral and was well known is Single Ladies by Beyonce.

The video features Beyonce at perhaps her best whereby it is a unique style and has been influential and memorable by fans and people all over the world. Individuality and original ideas help videos to be a success and I want to try to create a unique idea which will make my video success and could potentially go viral.

However, some music videos go viral for the wrong reasons; the video Friday by Rebecca Black has over 150 million views because many believe the video is ridiculous and annoying. However, the artist has been a huge success and is recognisable all over the world because she used the illustration method of simple lyrics in her video.

In the music industry today there are four major record labels left, there are Universal Music Group, Sony records, EMI and Warner Records. Despite being the biggest companies all these labels do more than produce music as the decline in the industry makes it unreliable and unsafe for the companies to rely completely on making money off music. The music industry is going into further decline over the years as there were already 1.2 billion legal downloads last year. This number is increasing accordingly due to the high access of illegal download sites, and there are too much for in industry to compete with. Therefore, artists can only rely on live music tours to generate lots of money for their music.