Research into the Music Industry

The Music Industry is dominated by transnational corporations which are known as ‘The Majors’:

• Universal
• Sony/BMG
• Warner Bros
• EMI

Most majors also own, or licence a string of smaller subsidiary companies in order to reach different kinds of audiences in different kinds of genre. Theses companies are known as ‘Major-independents’.

In addition to this, there are a huge number of small companies with little or no financial connection to the majors. These companies often concentrate on a small number of artists, within specialised niches in the industry. These are known as ‘Independents’.

It is misleading to see the industry simply as a ‘hierarchy’, dominated by the majors. A better description is a ‘web’ of companies, who are mutually dependent on each other:

• Smaller companies to gain access to bigger markets
• Bigger companies to gain access to new artists and movements in popular music.

Most record companies organise themselves internally into several key areas:

• Artists and Repertoire (A&R)
• Marketing/ Artist Development
• Promotions
• Legal
• Financial

The industry as a whole has a complex relationship with a number of different media: Radio, TV, Print media, Film, New Media. Synergy and symbiosis play a key role in this relationship.

Music Video

A Music video serves a number of different functions:

• Promotes a specific single or album
• Promotes a specific artist or band
• Creates, adapts or feeds into a ‘star image’
• Entertains as a product in its own right
• Reinforces, adapts or undermines the ‘meanings’ of a song

First Music video: Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody – MTV 1982

A music video often contains a number of different elements:

·         Performance

·         Narrative

·         Thematic

·         Symbolic

Because a music video is not a film, or even attempting to imitate reality, it is allowed to have a high concept. It is visually stylish, with an artistic use of mise-en-scene and acts as a ‘rhythmic’ montage, shown in a very fragmented style. There is usually experimental use of camera and editing, which lends itself to conspicuous lighting and cinematography. It is unlike film in the sense that continuity editing doesn’t have to be obeyed. It is a visual equivalent to music, and therefore provides an open, polysemic experience for the viewer.