The Music/Recording Industry

 The music industry is a large expanding industry a selection of large business that make money buy producing and selling music. There are many parts to the music industry, from producer, publishers, recording studios, record labels, the artists to radio broadcasters, promoters, booking agents, video producers and editors.

Recording of a song are reordered by an artist or band, these recordings are generally owned by the record company that signed the artist or band. The A&R department of that record company is responsible for finding new artist to sign with the company at then overseeing with the recording and producing of the songs. A recording of the song will usually been done in a recording studio alongside record producers and audio engineers, this will be paid for by the record company. However with the advances in technology many musicians can now use ‘home studio’ recording equipment, but many artist still use recording studios to create a better recording with the use of producers, engineers and specialist equipment. The record producer also oversees other aspects such as financial and artist aspects with the artist.

As the recordings are owned by the record company this will usually involve a recording contract specifying this and in return the record company takes on responsibility of the costs of producing, distributing and marketing the recording. The record company then pays the artist a small amount of the profits from the recording if successful known as a mechanical royalty.

There are many companies involved in the music industry, but there are certain companies that monopolize the industry:

Universal music group

Considered one of the ‘big four’ is a American multinational music company, a subsidiary of universal studios with a revenues of $5,584 million in 2010. Employing around 7000 employees and broken up into many divisions such as, Universal music publishing group, Universal music group distribution, Universal republic recording and so many more.

Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment is considered the second of the ‘big four’ controlled by Sony corporation of America, which is the US subsidiary of Japans Sony corporation. Sony Music Entertainment was founded in 1929 and generated around $5, 672 million revenue in 2010.

Warner Music Group

The third of the ‘big four’ is Warner Music group. An American based company founded in 1958 and owned by Warner Bros studios, and a subsidiary of access industries.

EMI

Lastly EMI music group based in London UK, owned by citigroup and founded in 1931. It is the fourth largest in the ‘big four’ of the music labels with a major publishing branch known as EMI music publishing.

The label has undergone huge success in the early 1950’s to the early 1970’s under the management of Sir Joseph Lockwood. The combination of EMI and its subsidiary labels and its roster of popular groups from, the beach boys to the Beatles made it one of the most successful and well known music groups at that time.