Case Study.

Sony Entertainment.
What is the market share for the US and the UK?

How is your label a conglormerete?

Sony Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Mobile Communications (formerly Sony Ericsson), and Sony Financial.

Globalisation.

Horizontally intergrated

Sony has 13 subsidary labels (featured on the website). These subsidary labels are; Epic records, Legacy recordings, Roc Nation, Sony Music Latin, Verity Records, RCA Records Nashville,

Music Industry terminology.

 Convergence of technology- is the tendancy for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks.

Convergence of Industrial Activity-

Synergy- Interconnected marketing and distribution of media products across a range of platforms and sectors.

Conglomerate- an international company with a wide and varied range of commercial interests.

Globalisation- The growing tendency of industrial and commercial companies to merge and operate on an international rather then a national or regional basis.

Analogue Music- In media technology, a method of recording visual and sound images. Analogue technology represents the shape or appearance of an object in an unbroken form.

Digitalisation- is technology been transferred by binary code.

Vertical intergration- the merge or takeover of companies operating at different stages of the production/ distribution process.

Horozontial intergration- the merge of competing companies from the same line of business and involved at the same level of activity.

Major record label- A record label which owns a high percentage of the sale costs within the music industry.

Subsidiary label- A label big label who have sublabels which are smaller, I.E. Sony and Syco

Niche Audience- A small but specific audience, who have an interest in one perticular genre etc.

Independant label- An independent record label (or indie record label) is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels.

Mainstream audience- A large audience of people aged 15-24

Fans-A person who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular sport, art form, or famous person.

Active Audience- Adience members who already are interested in an organization, issue, or cause.

Audiophiles-A person with an interest in high fidelity sound reproduction and its associated technology.

Early Adapters-A person who starts using a product or technology as soon as it becomes available.

Consumption- Consumption is an activity in which institutional units use up goods or services; consumption can be either intermediate or final.

Web 2.0- The second phase of the internet, where the focus shifts from people receiving information and services to people creating and sharing material.

Meta tags/ personalisation- (Meta Tag) Text inserted into the source code of a web page that includes keywords in order to provide information to a search engine about the contents of the page for search engine optimization.

Download- transfer a file or program from a central computer to a smaller computer or to a computer at a remote location.

Streaming- A method of relaying data (esp. video and audio material) over a computer network as a steady continuous stream, allowing playback to proceed while subsequent data is being received.

Peer to Peer- Decentralized file sharing, computation, communication, and more.

Piracy-The unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work.

Portability/ miniaturisation-the quality of being light enough to be carried.

Multitask-The ability to run more than one program at a time on a computer.

Sampling-The technique of digitally encoding music or sound and reusing it as part of a composition or recording.

Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)- the term digital audio workstation (DAW) originally referred to a tape-less, computer-based system.

Artist and repertoire- Artists and repertoire (A&R) is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists.

Record deal- a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist (or group).

Distribution-The action or process of supplying goods to stores and other businesses that sell to consumers.

Plugging/ marketing-The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

Music Industry Introduction

• To develop a case study on two particular record label.
• These institutions must be located in the contemporary music industry.
• The institutions must produce and/or distribute music in the UK.
• When researching your chosen record labels you must focus on three key areas : production, distribution, consumption and exchange.

What is research?
Production- the recording of the music, where and how?
Distribution- How the music is promoted? How does it get into the shops, played on the radio and made available for payable downloads?
Consumption- How do people consume the music available? Buying Cd's, downloading music, buying concert tickets, buying merchandise.

Where to start?
Sony/BMG - 21.5%
Warner Brothers - 11.3%

Universal - 38.9%

Independent labels - 28.4%

Sony/BMG

• A global recording group founded on March 3rd 2004.
• Sony BMG was a joint 50/50 between Sony Music Entertainment and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG).
• It owned a distributed record labels such as; Epic records, Columbia records and RCA.
• On August 5th 2008 Sony corp. agreed to buy Bertelsmann's to get full control. The music company was renamed Sony Music Entertainment Inc.

Sony's labels:

RCA label group

Sony CGM

Columbia

Syco

Sony's artists:

Justin Timberlake

Foo Fighters

Kings Of Leon

Bruce Springsteen

GlasVegas

The View

The Script

Warner Music Group

• WMG is a global leaders in national and international repertoire and home to some of the best known labels in the recorded music industry including: Asylum, Atlantic, Cordless, Rhino, RoadRunner, Rykodisc, Sire, Warner Brothers, Warner Music Nashville and Word.
• In addition to its U.S labels WMG operates through numerous affiliates and licences in more than 50 countries.
• There recorded music business includes growing artist service business, which offers artist management merchandising, touring, fan clubs, VIP ticketing, sponsorships and brand endorsements, and numerous third-party solutions that facilitate the sale of music- based content directly to consumers.
• In recent years, they've grown to become the worlds third-largest recorded music publishing business, one of the music industry's most successful.

Unviersal

• Unviersal Music Group (UMG) is the world's leading music company and is comprimised of two core business: recorded music and music publishing.
• It develops, market and distributes recorded music through a network of subsidiries, joint ventures and licensees in 77 countires representing 98% of the music market.
• UMG sells and distrubutes music video and DVD products, and licenses recordings, encouringing the legal distribution of music online and over cellular,cable and satellite networks.
• Universal Music Publishing Group, is the world's leading publishing business, it owns and acquries rights to musical compositions and licenses them for use in recordings and related uses such as films and advertisements.

Distribution-

In the U.S. Universal Music Group Distribution is the industry market share leader and consists of four major divisions.

More than 31,000 new album titles (including re-issues) were realeased in the UK last year, second only to the US- which demonstrates thed commitment to investment from UK record companies. BPI/OCC

UK record companies invest 17% of turnover in A&R. DTI data shows that other industries with traditions of heavy R&D expenditures such as pharm

Brief.

This is a case study of two record companies that target a British audience. One will be a major label and one is an independent label.

Case study should look at the production, consumption, distribution/marketing and exchange of audiences and institutions.

Domestic expenditure on music in all forms totals almost £5 billion a year and music activities generate the equivalent of 126,000 full time jobs in the UK.

The UK is the third largest market in the world for sales of music, behind the USA and Japan. Sales in the UK amounted to 10.4% of all music sold globally in 2004. As a source of repertoire (artists), the UK is second to the USA.

Britain is a Nation of music lovers and we buy more music than any other country- 3.2 Cd's per person each year.