Research for music video

Summarise what you have learnt about the state of the music industry in 2012;

Lesson (4) 23rd, September, 2011

In today's lesson we as a class learnt about the importance of music videos to both the industry and to the fans in 2011.

It is said that music videos allow the target audience feel a sense of pleasure when able to both watch and listen to a music than just hearing one, the performance, lighting and special effects combined in a music video bring the whole production to life. This is a use of promotion where the music video promotes the track, and influences the target audience to purchase the song, sometimes although the song/track may seem to be to our liking through the use of dance,  Mis-En-Scene and special effects/edits it isn't when listened to on its own. Now a days the promotion of music video/songs is global  through the use of social networking For example, Twitter has allowed artists to communicate directly with millions of fans bringing the artist and fan relationship closer.

After realising the importance of the music video both to the audience and industry we as a class paid attention to how the music industry is structured, it is said that the record industry traditionally has 'two sides'

• Mainstream labels - which are large companies with revenue available for different acts and
• The independent labels - which are separate to and operate independently of the mainstream labels.

The aim of the artist is pretty much simple and aware to everyone which is to be signed to an label in order to promote their music to the target audience, so which industry would be easier to join?
obviously the mainstream labels as they have revenue allowing themselves to be able to saturate markets and offer high production.One commonly asked question is who owns the music is it the artist or the record label? It turns out its the record label folks an artist will for example the record label will sell a album for about $18.98 and the artist will receive about 90c of that. Whether that's fair or not its up to you to decide but remember (who made the rule the record label and the artists signs)

How ownership has changed over the years;

• During the 1960s/70s - the music industry was dominated by the big 6
• Late 1990s - merging of companies were carried out to make five big companies 
• 2004 - Sony Music and BMG emerged and the market was dominated by 4 companies 
• The big 4 were - Sony, Emi, Universal and Warner. Each of these companies are conglomerates owning lots of subsidiaries such as AOL broadband, TV, Films and many more which allow them to dominate most markets. 

How the music industry has changed;

The music industry for the past 2 years has been constantly suffering from a loss in sales;

• 2008 - 428 million sales were made
• 2009 - 366 million sales were made
• 2010 - 319 million sales were made

The above facts/statistics show that an astonishing 1 million sales of album dropped within 2 years.

A major change in the music industry is that many retail stores are closing because people are choosing to download online rather than buy physical CD copies. For example HMV has announced that 40 stores would be closing because of poor sales. This affects the music industry as it means artists aren’t selling the same amount of CD’s as before, therefore, meaning other ways of making money are in scheme such as the artist going on tours and advertising brands/products in their music videos. The Internet can be used to explain the changes in CD sales. As now a days it has been a common use to download songs illegally online due to leaks. Additionally online stores like iTunes have also not made things easier for the music industry and the artistses as they allow their purchasers have the ability to choose selected songs from albums rather than purchase the whole album and purchase the song/album via download which reduce the selling of physical CDs.

Example of this change: Jay-Z & Kanye West released a joint album (Watch the Throne) on the 8^th of August 2011 exclusively online to iTunes and then later released the physical copy on the 12^th of August. The idea behind this was to prevent leaks. And the album went on to sell 290,000 digitally breaking a world record.

However older artists such as ‘Take That’ have remained successful in terms of album sales. A reason for this is that their older audience prefer to buy physical copies rather than doing things digitally.