The Pop Music Industry

"Modern music is people who can 't think signing artists who can 't write songs to make records for people who can 't hear." Frank Zappa

Imagine the number one song of the year with the most downloads, streaming numbers and views on Youtube could not be nominated for a Grammy. Up until June 2014, artists could not be nominated for such an award unless the song was completely their own, meaning there was no sampling of past music. This may not sound like a big deal until songs like “SOS” by Rihanna or “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice became chart topping tracks, and are both derived from older songs. Mark Ronson, music producer and DJ, speaks about how sampled music has changed the way generations discover music, as well as how creative ideas flourish from sampling other artist’s music. In this TED talk “How sampling transformed music,” Ronson gives his opinion on how artists transform

In this essay, you will read about an artist in the name of Robert Matthew Van Winkle, known professionally as Vanilla Ice who became famous for a while, not because of his talent, but because of the copyright of someone else baseline. He thought changing the rhythm of David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” baseline and not giving him credit would avoid him from any questions. In this essay I will provide you my opinion of Vanilla Ice’s song “Ice, Ice, Baby”as an example of plagiarism, with evidence provided of what he did wrong, and what he could have caused.

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)

Gone are the days where artist, songwriters, performers, producers and records companies reap full successes of songs through stage performance and radio airplay. Since 1960, a technological evolution has created many changes in how music are made, played and performed. From the era where television and radio was popular with much of its viewers and listeners being the youth to development of the Internet and World Wide Web platforms, music suffered much development. Huge part of these changes was how music was delivered to the audience this time not on the radio or television but on the Internet websites where music

When we hear the song Brown-Eyed Girl, it is safe to assume the majority of us think of the Van Morrison version that was first introduced in his album Blowin’ Your Mind, released in 1967. Since that time the song’s legend and popularity have grown to unprecedented heights. Many artists have redone the song, some with a similar music style to Morrison (like Jimmy Buffet), and others of a completely different genre like the punk rock band Green Day. In my essay I will argue that the stylistic differences between the two songs are not a barrier. Rather, in combination with the similarities associating with cover songs, they form a bridge between two genres. In this case, it is achieved by

Songs like “Ain’t no mountain high enough”, “My Girl”, and “ABC” have shaped American history in ways that people don’t even realize. We wouldn’t be listing to artist like Beyoncé, Drake, and John Legend if these former artists didn’t write and/or perform these songs. They have allowed African American music to blossom to what it is known for today. If these artists did not continue to write and produce music, they would have never gotten anywhere and we wouldn’t have the African American artist we love today. This paper will now go into more specific African American singer, songwriters, and composers.

For all of music’s history, the industry has favored the interests of songwriters over those of the performers. It appears that the industry believes that songwriters, both composers and lyricists, have full exclusive rights to whatever they compose, while performers have none to the music they perform. In Rock: Music, Culture, and Business, Schloss, Starr, and Waterman hold this value to be true in all of music’s history as well as currently, today. In terms of music business, this still remains an uneasy question to answer; to say whether, performers and composers both have rights, I have to agree. Schloss, Starr, and Waterman would be correct in that fact because performers like composers place their own styles and twists on the music. Therefore,

Over the past fifty years, the British Music Publishing industry has undergone dramatic changes. It has evolved as an entity with innovations in technology, changes and creations of laws and new mediums to promote and exploit songs to a wider audience. Therefore, the way in which the music publishing industry operates and exploits its assets has completely transformed, and continues to do so at a rapid pace. This paper will attempt to explore the ways in which publishers exploit song copyrights and the way in which this has changed over the past 60 years. It is important to define what is meant by copyright and its role within the industry. The Performing Right Society website states: “Copyright

XTC’s composer Andy Partridge considered Easter Theatre as one of the most perfect songs of his career. Featured as the Lead Single in Apple Venus Volume 1, Andy intentionally designed the lyrics uniquely, purportedly to exorcise the ever-present influences of the Beatles and the Beach Boys’ Brain Wilson. It is commonplace in rock music that every band has to espouse some Beatles-que lyrics and of course borrow to some extent from the genius of Brian Wilson, who is regarded as the greatest composer of all times. This paper investigates whether Andy was successful in avoiding such common influences, and more so those of the Beatles’ Penny Lane, which was done by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

In Australia, the art of collaboration is alive and well. But the concept of writing a song purely for another performer is engraved in Nashville’s music industry. During a conversation with locals here in Nashville, a self description of a ‘songwriter’ can contrast with my own understanding of this term. The Nashville music industry thrives from a clear distinction between a writer and a performer, and perhaps this clear focus on refining the art of story telling is what engraves Nashville as the United States hub for songwriting.

Do you ever wonder what is the meaning behind what you so proudly sing whenever you hear it? Music is an art form of culture which organizes sound with times It first came around in prehistoric times, however, as times passes, music is drastically changing. As a result, in the last decades music has experienced drastic changes in the themes they are talking about. These changes are due to the generations and what they are living, political and social actions of the time. For example, the decade of the 80s was the rise of hip-hop and rap music from a local phenomenon to a worldwide known genre of music. Previously, a crack cocaine epidemic had stroke major cities in the USA and it coincided with the rise of hip-hop in black communities as these

The fact that replicating a seventeen-years-old song can still become a hit in 2017, demonstrates that there is a pre-designed pattern for popular music in which changing a few characteristics to make a new songs sound “unique” can still result in success. For this reason, Adorno argues that the music industry produces music in an “industrial” way--popular music is centralized in its pattern and modifies some characteristics to seem “individualistic.” Though Shape of You and No Scrubs contain different keys, tempo, and of course, lyrics, they both rely on a chord progression of i-ic-VI-VII in a common time (MusicNotes, 1 & FindSongTempo, 1). Shape of you takes advantage that the audience is accustomed to listening to the same pattern and it is modified to fit the current era and thus, result in a significant monetary income.

Peterson and Berger decided to focus on the singles that reached the Top Ten on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart from 1948 to 1973. The music industry’s control of the production and consumption was measured. They measured innovation and diversity in various ways; they used

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.