Music Industry Notes

• Musical taste can be contraversial to the point of tribalism, where it can often signify personality and lifestyle , in wasy such as dress sense, speech and the way someone acts
• It is agreed by all commentators that music sits at the epicentre of popular culture, where not only can an individual get a sense of identity, but the Global community can be changed by mucial trends
• Some critics say Industry and Music are incompatible terms.
• 'Dynamic tension' exists between the artistic and commercial forces of underpins the success of vast media.
• Tension between the organic and synthetic
• Another feature considered is 'synergetic connections' with other media forms - this codependence means that a 'mutual reliance' can be productive but risky
• The music industry is dominated by 5 transnational corporations, known as 'the majors': Sony, Universal, Warner Bros, BMG, EMI
• Most majors license or own smaller companies in order to reach different audiences in different kinds of genre. These are known as 'independent majors'
• There are a large number of small companies with little or no financial support from the majors, known as 'the independents', who often concentrate on a smaller number of artists with specialised niches in the industry
• It is misleading to say there is a hierarchy in the music industry, it is more like a web of companies, whose connections allow smaller companies to gain access to bigger markets and bigger companies to gain access to new artists and movements in popular music
• Most record companies organise themselves into key areas: artists and repetoire, marketing/artist development, promotions, legal, and financial
• The industry has a complex relationship with a number of different media and purposes: Radio, TV, print media, Film, New media - Synergy and Symbiosis.
• Music videos perform a number of functions: to promote a single and album, to promote an artist or band, to create, adapt or feed into a 'star image', to entertain as a product of its own right, and to reinforce, adapt or undermine the 'meanings' of a song
• Music video elements: performance, narrative, thematic, symbolic
• Music videos - visually stylish: artistsic, mis-en-scene, 'Rythmic' montage and fragmented style, intercutting, experimental use of camera/editing, fast pace, conspicuous lighting and cinematography, often break the rules of continuity editing
• Music videos - a visual equivalent to music, encourages repeated consumption, encourages identification or desire for the aritist, provies an open and polysemic experience for the viewer
• Current threats: internet and downloading, manufactured programmes with live feeds, the vidvert or i-video, and music television becomming more mainstream