Globalization in the Music industry

The music industry is made of companies which produce and sell music. The music industry as we know it was solidified in the mid-twentieth century, where records succeeded sheet music as the primary product in the music business. Record companies were established, but did not last very long until the late 1980s when the “Big Six”, a group of multinational corporations consisting of Sony, MCA, WEA, Polygram, EMI, and BMG controlled most of the market. Initially there were five corporations (CBS and RCA (both now belonging to Sony), WEA, EMI, and Polygram) that had emerged in 1978 to own 60 per cent of the market. (Wallis and Malm, 1984, p. 81)

Music can be observed as one of the oldest pieces of art and entertainment. The industry is evolving at a hasty rate, with all thanks to the exponential growth of technology. Trends have come and gone over time since media productions are compelled to accompany these changes in technology in order to keep profit. With these advancements, the experience for the music industry and the user has terrifically changed. In this essay, I argue that there has been a drastic evolution in how the way music is recorded and consumed over several centuries. Throughout this period, several pioneers have met the needs to organize craze and association of a feasible business standard for the future of the music industry.

The Music Industry has been a constant in the hearts of fans and the general public for years. During those years, music companies were ran a certain way that may have seemed successful for a while. Everything changed when Independent Record Labels were created. Music was revolutionized when the effects of Independent Record Labels took place, when Atlantic Records was created, and when founders, producers, and artists worked together to create a viable business and music outlet.

With the advances in technology and increase in internet broadband availability (The Broadband Commision, 2014), record labels are being forces to innovate and update their business models (M.Coz & Torres, 2013) to keep up with the latest technology (Solis, 2015). Of these technologies, the move away from physical sales (of music) to Digital sales is the most significant. Digital sales have increased over the last 6 years (as shown in Table 1) in terms of revenues, and this is set to carry on this way in the future (Solis, 2015).

In recent years, three firms have taken control of over 75 percent of the music industry: Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group (McIntosh & Pavlik, 2004, p. 99). Because these record labels do not profit from music styles that lacks strong mass market appeal, styles tend to fit well-established genres. This results in formulaic and homogeneous music.

After a rapid development over the past 10 years, the music market is currently undergoing significant changes. These changes are caused not only by marketing competition but also by the challenges from external marketing environment.

The ever-changing landscape of music distribution, due to constant advancements in technology, is sometimes hard to keep up with for artist, producer, and consumer alike. New editions of textbooks in Music Business classes are issued each year, and changes are made in the industry before the semester is even over. Because of this, it is vital for the industry to not only not only be aware of what is currently going happening, but also be able to foresee the direction that the music business is heading in. In this aspect, it seems that we are at a turning point where consumers and artists are taking

Nothing is more enjoyable than listening to your favorite song. All over the world, people listen to music on a daily basis. Music plays a major part in a tremendous number of people’s lives. While they are enjoying the music, they do not think about how the song came about. Music is not just the sound you hear or the voices in the background. People do not think about what is behind the scenes of where music comes from. Before the song is completed, someone has to make it happen. In music, there are different careers which are the song writer, the manager, the marketing executive, and the produced. Each of these careers play a huge role in how music is brought to the public.

Music has played a vital role in human culture and evidence based on archaeological sites can date it back to prehistoric times. It can be traced through almost all civilizations in one form or another. As time has progressed so has the music and the influences it has on people. Music is an important part of popular culture throughout the world, but it is especially popular in the United States. The music industry here is, and has been, a multi-million dollar business that continues to play an important role in American popular culture. This is also a art form and business that is forever changing as the times and more importantly, technology changes. Technology has changed the way music is made as well as how it is produced,

In this article, Peterson and Berger show how the organization of the popular music industry affects the music that America hears.

No one can deny that technology is actively changing the music industry. Production, distribution and sales of music have been affected dramatically within the last 10 years along with artists, composers, and technicians. Most of the changes have been great for consumers, but vastly negative for professionals in the music industry, however a few artists have found ways to adapt to the changing atmosphere of digitally downloaded music and use it to their advantage. We’ve seen music change form from physical, tangible products like records and CD’s to electronic single tracks stored in an invisible cloud. Two major factors in this sudden revolution are online music stores (specifically iTunes) and file sharing websites that allow music to be downloaded illegally.

The music industry is an oligopoly. Since the late 1800’s people like Thomas Edison have been buying up patents in communication technology, forming monopolies, leading to a non-competitive entertainment industry. With only a handful of corporations controlling all aspects of acquisition, distribution and marketing of music, harsh business principles create an exploitative industry that takes the best of what artists have to offer and leaves many of them unable to support themselves. Beginning in the 1950’s with payola and white cover music and ultimately evolving into iTunes and Spotify, the music industry has grown into a billion dollar industry with far-reaching influence and control. Contracts rarely serve the artists’ best interest and many are left out to dry when their usefulness has expired.

Introduction: Setting the trend for the future, the distribution and consumption of recorded music transformed dramatically with the launching of Apple’s iTunes in 2001. The proliferation of online music subscription services and other music sharing services exerted a great pressure on the conventional music distribution business model. Combined with this transformation, piracy of digital music had a profound impact on the whole industry. These worsening conditions in the market place for recorded music forced both established and upcoming new artists to experiment with new ways of selling their music.

When speaking economically, the digital music sector of the international music industry is undoubtably the most important sector in the industry. Within the last decade, music has seen cardinal changes in the way both major and independent labels distribute their products. An industry that once relied on Payola 's and mass distribution of physical records and CD 's now relies heavily on the power of the internet. The first instance of mass distribution of music through the internet was by the service Ritmoteca.com in 1998 [1]. Ritmoteca had a library of over 300,000 songs, offering individual songs for 99 cents each and albums for $9.99. After signing distribution deals with many major music labels such as Warner

The music industry has experienced a difficult period for the past decade. since the initial decline of Napster both record labels and artists have seen their revenues dwindling. As the music industry has progressed vinyls were swapped for CD’s and more recently on demand audio streaming. Since its introduction, digital audio streaming has been regarded as the demise of the audio industry by some artists and promoters, however, it is also perceived as the future of the industry as it has shown promising growth over its relatively short existence. This is due to various positive and negative factors that are entwined in the system, This factors being primarily overall revenue and profitability of the method, as much as convenience for both consumers, promoters and artist. In order to understand such debate, one must first assess the actual definition of music streaming, furthermore, identifying its effects towards the music industry and what could be regarded as its life blood: Artist income and average revenue.