Within the music industry there are four labels which are dominating the records of music these include; Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music group and EMI. All of these companies consist of smaller companies and labels, which all take part in serving different functions within regions and market of the music industry.
Reported by Neilsen SoundScan the ‘Big Four’ account for “81.87%” of the US market in 2005, whilst IFPI also reported in 2005 the ‘Big Four’ accounted for “71.7%” of retail music sales; this shows that Universal Music Group have a percentage of 25.5 % of music sales shares, Independent labels have sale shares of just 28.4 % in the world music market; this is very minute compared to the “Big Four “ music companies where by EMI shared 13.4 % and Warner Music 11.3 % of the world music shares; this shows the “ Big Four” dominate most of the world’s music market sales according to IFPI. The UK has shown to be very successful in the music industry coming 3rd in a chart having 6.4-9.1 % of the album sales and market value in the world between 1990s and 2000s compared to the US having 30-35% of the share of the world market.
Universal Music Group (UMG) is the largest within the record labels in the record industry, it has a very commanding market share; UMG is owned subsidiary of international French media conglomerate Vivendi (located in France; Paris) whereas UMG headquarters are located in New York City. UMG consists of record labels A and M, Blue Thumb Decca record company, Def Jam, Interscope ext, as well as a multitude of record labels owned or distributed by its record company subsidiaries around the world. Independent musicians who want to retain the rights to their own songs now have the right. UMG previously signed a deal with famous artists Michael Jackson, his death renewed a demand for his music and merchandise; therefore when its hard finding new musical mega-acts the classic pop titles of Michael Jackson continue to gain them a profit. Artist such as ABBA, Craig David, Duffy, Lady Gaga ext have signed contract deals with UMG.
Sony Music Group is the second largest global company, which is controlled by Sony Corporation of America. Sony endorse a range of current labels such as Columbia, Epic, RCA music records ext, also Sony Music group distributes independent labels such as aware records and GOOD music. They have had contract deals with such artists as Beyonce Knowles, Christina Aguilera, Elvis Presley, Kelly Clarkson and Leona Lewis ext. when artists sign up to Sony music they are asked to sign away control of their official websites for life. Sony Music also within its contract gives the company ownership over an artists name as well as any variation of it, for use as a domain name. I feel with this label the artists have very little say in decisions and they take full control of aspects such as the artist name once the contract is signed.
In 1929 Jack Warner, president of Warner Bros founded Music Publishers Holding Company (MPHC) to acquire music copyrights as a means of providing inexpensive music in 1987. In December 2008, negotiations between WMG and YouTube broke down; resulting in WMG blocking or muting videos on YouTube that feature music recordings belonging to them. This was recovered in September 09 where YouTube and WMG were in a multi-year deal. Music Group, endorse such record labels as Warner Bros record Inc, Independent Label Group ext. They have had contract deals with artists such as Blondie, Craig David, Oasis, Panic at the Disco and Pendulum ext.
EMI, as well as the record label of EMI music, which is the largest Music Publisher in the world. EMI won a Music Week Award for Publisher of the year every year over 10 years. Emi endorse such record label groups as Angel Music group, Capitol Music Group and Blue Note Label Group. Emi has signed record contracts with such artists as Spice Girls, The Sex Pistols, McFly and Lily Allen. All of these artists are unique and a bit quirky, I feel my artist is unique and a bit quirky she also started her career through MySpace just as Lily Allen started her career. MySpace has now been an inspiration to many new starting artists and due to tens of thousands of people watching Lily Allen’s music videos she got herself a deal with Regal Recordings. I feel MySpace is a perfect way to start out to get noticed and EMI will help this along; I therefore choose EMI as the Music Label which she signed a contract with in the future, due to starting her career on MySpace and being slightly quirky/different such as previous EMI artist and hopefully as popular as previous EMI artists. however we signed our artist to a slightly smaller record label with broken heart; we decided on this due to our artist being quiet quirky and different and also concentrating on "broken heart" songs and emotions within her music.
