PPQ

Question: The increase in hardware and content in the music industry has had a significant impact on producers and audiences in recent times. Discuss.

The increase in hardware has had a positive and negative impact on the music industry. Music is now more accessible from home without having to buy the physical copies in advance. This is due to the increase in computers and other mobile devices. Services like Spotify and Youtube make it easy for people to access music where and when they want it. Spotify offers a free service which requires an internet connection or a paid service which allows you to access all their songs and even download them to listen to when no internet connection is available.

The increase in both hardware and content within the music industry has also  greatly aided smaller production companies and artists signed to these companies as it is now just as easy for these production companies with significantly less budget to make a successful artist as it is with a larger company. This has become evident in recent years especially with artists such as Adele. However this drastic change has also had negative effects on both artists and producers as audiences have become much less interested in the release of new content as it has become a daily occurrence. There is also a much higher quality of recording equipment which has lead to higher quality music. This means that even smaller artists are able to record high quality music and compete with more well know artists. This has seen a rise in the number of smaller artists having hit singles or albums and has encouraged the average listener to explore different music options.

Music is now downloadable and this makes music cheaper to produce as not as much money has to be spent on  producing hard copies. This means smaller artists can record and sell music over the internet without having to produce a single hard copy. This has impacted the music industry immensely as artists can now post music online, free of charge and have a chance of developing a large following, such as Ed Sheeran who rose to fame after being discover on Youtube. He is now one of the most famous artists around.

Audiences are less interested in one particular artist due to increase in content and smaller artists are getting more attention by groups of individuals which leads to the overall interest in music being more evenly distributed amongst bigger and smaller artists.

Youtube and other online music sites help to raise awareness of smaller artists due to features of Youtube like the "Suggested" section that show videos related to ones you have already watched.

There has also been an increase in the popularity of Techno music as instruments are becoming more computerised. This has changed the music industry and even created new genres of music. House and Dubstep are two of the most popular genres in the modern day and these are created and played using computer hardware and software.

 On the other hand, many may argue that there has been next to no change within the music industry due to this increase in hardware and content as the majority of people will still prefer to listen to mainstream artists that are within the Top 40 charts and are often played on radio stations rather than venturing online or into music applications with the aim of discovering alternative or new artists to listen to, many would argue that this has created a “tyranny of choice,” audiences are offered so many different options that they have begun to feel overwhelmed by alternative audiences and therefore have deliberately chosen to stick with mainstream artists.

Question: Discuss the issues raised by media ownership in the production and exchange of music products in the music industry.

Media ownership comes in two main forms as a music artist. You are either part of the oligopoly that is known as "The Big 3" or you're an independent artist. "The Big 3" come in the form of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Sony alone controls as much as 30% of the music industry so this gives you some idea of just how big these "Big 3" are. Some of the artists that have contracts with Sony Music Entertainment are Britney Spears, Calvin Harris, Michael Jackson and Prince. As of 2014, artists like these provided Sony Music Entertainment with a revenue of $4.89billion so there is clearly money to be made. However, big labels like these are likely to spend a large percentage of their revenue on various things such as advertising, equipment, wages of staff, and of course, the percentage given to the artists. 

The Big 3 have all benefited from horizontal integration. Horizontal reduces competition and cost. Sony Music Entertainment for example is now made up from many, many other smaller labels such as Columbia Records, Epic Records, RCA Records and Sony Masterworks to name a few. This has dramatically cut down the amount of competition faced by Sony Music as all of these labels would have competed with each other separately as different record labels. Not only has it cut down the amount of competition they face, Sony have now significantly reduced the size of the market and effectively decreased the choice of record label a new artist could chose to sign for. Not only have they reduced the size of the music market but due to their lateral integration of their other companies in film, music and video games. This has led to Sony controlling a large range of all media content. So the real question now is can the independent labels even compete?