To succeed in this section of the key media concepts exam you need to develop a case study on a particular record label. This institution must be located in the contemporary music industry and it must produce and/or distribute music in the UK. The focus will be on how this institution relates to:
Production: recording music
Distribution: promoting music and getting it into shops, on the radio and downloaded for payment
Consumption: people buying CDs, downloading music, paying for live concert tickets and purchasing related products.
The Music Industry:
Stafford (2007) offers this helpful way of describing what is meant by “the music industry”:
The music industry can be defined as the organisation of the various activities associated with performing and recording music and distributing access to those performances around the world. Because the basis of music production is accessible to everyone with a modicum of talent, the industry is both more ‘open’ than filmmaking and less easily ‘controllable’ than traditional broadcast television. This has led to a longstanding institutional difference between small and ‘independent’ music organisations and a large corporate ‘mainstream’.
While the ‘big four’ are incredibly powerful, there is much more independent activity and success in the music industry than in other media sectors. So we have to think about the industry as being divided into two. One portion (the majors and the subsidiaries they own) is much bigger than the other (the huge number of much smaller independents, who between them make up roughly 20 per cent of the market). In addition, we now live in an online age so we must consider the importance of hardware producers and music distributors like Apple.
The Music Industry and Technology
Like most media sectors, the development of the music industry is inextricably linked to the development of technology, in this case portable hardware for recording, listening and more recently, downloading.
Let’s spend some time charting the various innovations that have shaped the industry. In 1980 compact disc technology emerged and in 1982 CD’S were usable on a PC for the first time. By 1988 sales of the CD had overtaken vinyl and in 1990 recordable CDs became available. In 1997 we saw the emergence of MP3 and in 1999 the infamous Napster service was launched by 18-year-old student, Shawn Fanning, providing the first peer-peer software. This really was a revolution and led to lega battles over copyright, which made public the tensions between the radical rebellious nature of the content of popular music and the corporate context in which it is sold. In particular, the metal band Metallica became highly visible as careful guardians of profits. In 2000, broadband was introduced in the UK and in 2001, Apple launched the iPod and iTunes. By 2003 CD sales had fallen by a third, and in 2005 the iPod shuffle made downloading much cheaper and more accessible.
The iPod now sells at a rate of 3.5 million a month. We cannot understand how Apple operates without looking first at convergence – between the music industry, computing, television and telecommunications. The analogue “switch off” in the UK will allow mobile phone companies to compete for bandwidth, with a view to enabling mass downloading onto mobile devices such as the iPhone, with iTunes acting as the software which allows the whole system to work.
Richard Branson’s recent decision to sell his chain of Virgin Megastores was heralded by media commentators as a nail in the coffin of mainstream music retail. Branson’s business strategy was informed by evidence that only specialist music retail can withstand the competition from iTunes, piracy and supermarket chains undercutting the traditional “record shop”. But there is disagreement over the validity of claims that the high street music store will soon be extinct:
According to ERA figures, in 2006 specialists accounted for the biggest slice of music market with 46.5% of CD album sales by value. Supermarkets had 25%, high street multiples such as Woolworths and WH Smith 12.2%, the internet 11%, mail order 2.5% and others 2.7%.
Vertical integration
Vertical integration has for some time been a developing feature of media ownership, but Sony and Apple have taken this to new levels. Consider Apple for a moment- it designs computer hardware, markets a range of accessories, monopolises the operating software that the user needs to use the computer (just as Microsoft does) and produces a range of software that broadens the appeal of its system – iTunes, iMovie and Garageband to name but three. Another key element of Apple’s strategy is the resource they have invested in their retail outlets, employment at which is competitive.
This vertical integration strategy is significant for media students because it blurs traditional boundaries between production, distribution and consumption. ITunes is, of course, a legal downloading facility among a range of criminal alternatives. Stafford (2007) foregrounds the centrality of copyright to the development of the music industry. This, of course is much more complex than ever before because of web 2.0 technologies, which allow people to easily share music over the Internet, a practice referred to as “file sharing”.
File sharing and the industry response.
In an interview conducted for this book, Ben Andrews, independent music promoter from Birmingham, offered this extended description of the climate:
Independent music producers and distributors operating in the climate of downloading are now using Paypal buttons on websites to pay for homemade CDRs that are sent in the post, streaming their music from their MySpace or website. In addition, they are loading video files into YouTube, selling vinyl versions or vinyl-only releases at gigs and handmade sleeves of limited edition CDs and LPs. And organising festivals of like-minded musicians who then trade or swap or link up with galleries and visual artists for one-off performances.
As anyone with a decent internet connection can get their music heard and can hear similar music to their own through MySpace, this might seem to inevitably lead to a decline in sales. But there is now no need for a middle-man distributor. Obscure music that would not appear in the standard generic categories at HMV can get out there – examples are the successes of Finders Keepers and Ghost Box – these would fall into the cracks between “film soundtrack’, ‘children’s music’, library sound effects’, ‘electronic’, whatever. As regards small labels, growing success of the subscription website emusic.com, which only sells small label music, is certainly an advantage. Because the label has no distribution costs, the artist gets a larger percentage of the money.
The technological transformation is clear – iTunes means you don’t need a hard copy of the music and that the consumer can order and reorder their collection in endless overlapping play lists. But the decline of the local record shop also kills off personal one-to-one recommendation as a key factor- it has been killed by file sharing, Amazon and supermarkets. Five years ago people would come in for the latest Radiohead or Coldplay CD and that would keep them afloat, especially as people purchased other stuff when visiting. Now people just buy it from Tesco or online. The other side of this is that music is everywhere now. Glastonbury on Channel 4, special music digital channels.
From a local promoter’s point of view, the music industry has become borderless. Anyone can distribute their music very easily to any one in the world. My space is a giant listening booth where the consumer can sample any type of popular music and explore other people’s friend’s music.
Music Radio
The impact of the ‘MP3 culture’ or the ‘iPod generation’ on music radio is complex – they offer extraordinary challenges, making DJ’s and a one-dimensional play list very old-fashioned yet music radio is currently more popular than ever. The most tangible outcome of music radio’s response to downloading has been to place more importance on the music itself and less on the presenters. This, as Miranda Sawyer (2007) points out in an interview for Observer Music Monthly, is an unexpected victory for the late John Peel. Some stations have dispensed with presenters entirely, while others have made the focus of conversation much more explicitly about the music and the credibility of the music played a key ingredient.
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