Major record label research project
- 1. Major Record Label Research Project.
- 2. Warner Music Group has many, many artists and most of them are in the charts, or on the Radio1 playlist. For example: Jason Derulo – is signed to Beluga Heights, which WMG owns. Muse – are signed to East West Records, which is owned by WMG. Kids In Glass Houses – are signed to Roadrunner Records, which is a subsidiary of WMG. As well as these, WMG has loads of signed artists which have been in the charts as well. For example major bands like Guns N Roses, Green Day, Oasis, Linkin Park, The Prodigy and many, many more.
- 3. The Long Tail. Muse – 155,896,298 plays, 73,402,526 views. Guns N Roses - 50,769,873 plays, 24,051,777 views. Avenged Sevenfold - 30,368,478 plays, 24,404,481 views. Pinkly Smooth - 86,913 plays, 1011 views. Linkin Park - 112,867,634 plays, 81,192,243 views. Revelation Theory - 330,362 plays, 701,011 views. Plays - Last FM Views - YouTube
- 4. Artists that are playing major music festivals, which are signed to Warner Music Group. Guns N Roses – headlining Reading & Leeds festival. Lostprophets – playing Reading & Leeds festival. Paramore – playing Reading & Leeds festival. Pendulum – playing Reading & Leeds festival. Muse – playing Glastonbury festival. HIM – playing Download festival. Stone Sour – playing Download festival. Stone Temple Pilots – playing Download festival. Motley Crue – playing Sonisphere festival. Madina Lake – playing Sonisphere festival. The Prodigy – headlining V Festival.
- 5. Ownership Research. TIME WARNER: - TV drama. - CNN news. - magazine publishing. - TV, Films, Music. WARNER MUSIC GROUP: - Atlantic Records: - Warner Bros. Records Inc.: - Rhino Entertainment, - Independent Label Group, - WEA International Inc.
- 6. Production Research. The maturation of the CD market has lead to a significant decline in physical sales for music industry. From 1990 to 1999, the U.S. recorded music industry grew at a compound annual growth rate of 7.6%, a trend that was fuelled in part by the replacement of vinyl records and cassettes with CDs. Since then, it's estimated that yearly sales of physical music product in the U.S. have declined at a compound annual growth rate of 6%. The recorded music industry as a whole has also seen negative growth since 1999, largely because of digital piracy, but also partly because of declining CD sale. WMG has not managed to escape this trend, as the graph to the left shows a steady decline in revenue from physical sales over the past few years. New & modern media technology has helped major record labels to find and recruit talented artists. For example the internet is a major way of finding new artists, mainly on social networking sites eg. On MySpace, 2.5 million hip hop and 1.8 million rock acts registered in May 2009, and as the internet is used by millions of people worldwide, these artists are easy to find & their talent can be spread by word of mouth.
- 7. Marketing Research. WMG has many marketing techniques to promote new artists, a new CD or single launches. Some of these techniques are – website, MySpace, press coverage, advertising & viral online campaigns etc. A main way of promoting their artists is on MySpace. On here they can have their own profile, add fans, promote gigs/events, people can listen to their music, and many more. I think this is a good way of promoting their artists as millions use the internet worldwide, so they will be easy to find and their talent can be spread by word of mouth from friend to friend. WMG also use online forums, message boards & also gig reviews to promote their bands. This could be on the bands official website, fan sites or other web pages. WMG also have a YouTube channel. The main thing featured on their channel is videos of their artists’ songs or new songs. They also promote their artists YouTube channel. As well as this, a new website has been created - Hulu.com – it is an increasingly popular US-based online video entertainment site, and has now signed Warner Music Group. WMG said they will provide music videos, live concerts, artist interviews and other material to Hulu.com for people to see. WMG & the band managers also organise major gigs & festivals for their artists to play at and to promote them.
- 8. Distribution & Exchange Research. Major shops and supermarkets such as HMV, Tesco’s and Morrisons stock CDs from my major label. The prices of these can vary, for example it depends if they are on sale, so they could be from as low as £3 or could be as high as £17.99. Although normally if it’s a high price it could be a double CD. You can’t download tracks from the WMG website, however you can download them off of iTunes and they are normally 75 or 99p. New media technology has benefited the distribution of WMG’s artists, as now instead of just being able to buy CDs in shops you can now download or live stream tracks online. (For example, iTunes, Last FM, Spotify and people can watch artists’ videos on YouTube). However, WMG doesn’t like live streaming websites as they think of it as ‘theft’. So this new media technology has radically altered the way fans can access music, majorly because of the internet. However, piracy of music is a huge problem now as a lot of teenagers download tracks illegally, on programs such as Frostwire, and this has had a major negative effect on physical CD sales, so this has resulted in record labels & artists losing a lot money.