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.