TASK 6: MUSIC INDUSTRY – QUESTION/ESSAY TEMPLATE
- Discuss the pros and cons of traditional media production/ownership and compare to those of new emerging models of music production/ownership (@750 words).
Suggested timeline for this essay
Ownership, within the music industry, covers the rights and ability to earn money from music, and it is a scene that is constantly changing.
Traditionally artists would sign contracts with record labels to have their work distributed, earning money for their music in exchange for the label retaining all rights to it’s distribution and marketing. However more recently, alongside the growth of technology and the impact it has on our lives the approach to music distribution and ownership has changed as many aspects of music publication have become much more accessible to the public. This digitalisation and democratisation have caused artists to turn to different methods of distribution, signing to smaller Indie labels or producing their music completely independently rather than signing to a larger conglomerate label.
Traditionally, an artist will be signed to one of the big three conglomerate labels of the music industry, Warner Music Group (WMG), Universal Music Group (UMG) or Sony BMG (or one of their subsidiaries). These three companies own around ⅔ of the overall market share of the industry and as a result of this have a tight grasp of the industry and strong influence on it. Many artists will sign to these labels due to their well established grasp and back catalogue of successful artists, with promises of success and publicity, among them working with massive artists such as Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and The Beatles. Their power is further demonstrated through how, in 2012, UMG bought Electronic Music Industries (EMI) for 1.9 million USD, another company previously considered a fourth contender in this group, showing just how powerful they could become when starting to merge together. However, this move by UMG to expand their power also caused some backlash from artists, many switching to smaller labels in protest, considering how the big three often demand a higher share of profits from each artists’ success than independent labels do. This displays how artists are actively choosing to challenge the unfair deals of the conglomerates and are, as a result, transforming the industry.
Alternatively, more recently many artists have begun signing with smaller and independent record labels (often called the “indies”), often specialising in specific genres and styles and appealing to artists through having more personal experience in the industry. Due to their smaller size they will often find some difficulty as a business to begin with, especially when competing against big conglomerate companies, but just because they’re smaller doesn’t mean they can’t be successful. Transgressive Records are a good example of this, over 15 years they went from a couple of friends with £1,000 and little experience as a record label to being called “Britain’s definitive indie label for the 21st Century”. Over this time they stayed loyal to their motives, giving honest feedback and always doing what was best for the artist even if it appeared unconventional. They act as great examples of how with commitment and dedication a small record label can grow to be greatly successful in the industry and that size does not limit your success, painting the picture of how indie labels can offer much more personalised management for their artists and create a more tailored deal for the artist’s individual needs than larger conglomerate labels can afford to.
Even more recently, however, a third approach to the industry has emerged, utilising the growing capabilities of digital and converged technologies when creating and distributing music artists can now release their work online completely independently. As the equipment needed to record, create, share and release music becomes increasingly available to the public many artists are shown to be taking advantage of these converged technologies to create a career for themselves. Alongside the wide reach of social media these DIY artists – such as Hardy Caprio, a university student producing music in his free time – can now distribute their music to a wide and expansive audience at no cost. This democratisation of music production introduces a new level of competition to record labels who previously relied on the exclusivity of the industry in order to gain artists, creating yet another defining line between the older, traditional, record label models and the newer, emerging, more independent ones.
However the freedom of DIY artists comes with it’s own downsides; as much of their music is released openly to the public it is much harder to defend from issues such as piracy. One perspective on this issue can be seen regarding royalty-free/stock music artists, who create music especially to be licensed for use in film, television, radio or other media. These artists will upload their music to online libraries so as to have the rights to use purchased, with the libraries’ owner taking a portion of their profits. This purchasing of the music’s rights-of-use through online libraries means that the original artists are much more difficult to track back to from where their music is heard. This means that whilst they still make profits from this work, it questions whether they are receiving the full recognition that they deserve, despite the wide audiences their work is reaching. Displaying how despite the freedom gained from emerging digital production technologies, this can come at the price of the artist’s recognition and create issues regarding their rights and ownership in a much more saturated market.
The issue of ownership and rights to music is not exclusive to DIY artists. The company Kobalt, specializing in the distribution of music in a more modern, online scene has addressed the issues surrounding this topic, “Kobalt’s global technology platform tracks and collects royalties for the billions of micro-payments per song in digital music today”. Kobalt are aware of the issues concerning piracy and illegal distribution of music and take actions to prevent it, furthering their success and appeal to artists by doing so. This addresses many of the concerns of the modern production and ownership models, with the company actively recognising and working on these issues for their artists and therefore creating a fair and healthy relationship between the label and artist by helping them earn what they deserve.
Despite Kobalt’s promises of protection to their artists however, there remain issues in this area concerning the platforms themselves on which artists distribute their music. Spotify is one of these platforms, one of the most successful music streaming businesses and worth over $19 billion, however with this power they are held responsible for paying artists correctly for their work, a responsibility they have been found failing to fulfil on occasion. In 2018 Spotify was sued by Wixen for unpaid royalties to artists, seeking damages of $150,000 per song for 10,000 songs. This highlights how easily artists can lose track of the money they are owed through online audiences and how important it is for artists to be able to trust the companies distributing their music, another example of the risks that come alongside the freedom of new technologies in a new industry model.
In conclusion, the music industry continues to be a complicated and ever changing landscape, as the decisions artists face when it comes to ownership and production remain massively important to their career yet offer a much wider range of options than ever before, each choice holding its own positives and negatives regarding artistic freedom, audience reach and recognition for your work.
