Choosing the Music Label

For the music label for my product, I have looked into existing record labels from the major conglomerates as well as independent record labels. 

Successful media products rely greatly upon marketing and distributions as they do upon good production processes – this includes both the major and indie records. In today’s society, 80% of the music market is dominated by The Big Three – Sony Music, Warner and Universal as they have a lot of money. For example, Sony is worth $17.7 billion therefore is a conglomerate and owns many small companies – such as Columbia Records; who Beyoncé is signed to. Whereas, the Independent labels – which is a considerable amount smaller than the major labels; take up 20% of the music market purely for the fact they don’t have as much money.  However, artists such as Adele challenge the concept of independent labels not earning much money and being well known as she is worth $455 million and is recognised worldwide. Adele is signed to XL Recordings along with 33 other artists. Moreover, Taylor Swift is signed to an independent label company Big Machine Records and is worth $200 million.

It is often believed that independent labels are more about the love of music and don’t have much money – therefore, through web 2.0 they can interact with the audience and internet to create a market for their music. They often go about producing their music through horizontal integration – where by each part of the process carried out relies on other companies to help them produce a product. Furthermore, apps such as Garage Band is a whole music creation studio on a computer – making it easy to learn, play, record, create and share hits worldwide – creating a threat to the major labels. 

My Chosen Record Label

After thoroughly researching into existing music labels, I have decided to use Universal as it is one of the most recognized labels in the music industry - therefore,I want to portray my artist to be known worldwide and popular through my presentation and choice of music label.I am going to use a pre-eminent label of Universal that is called 'Interscope Records'. Interscope Records has signed artists such as 'Maroon 5', 'Imagine Dragons', 'The Black Eyed Peas', 'U2', 'The Rolling Stones' - who are all categorsied within the Pop/Rock genre. 

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