Section B Music Industry 30/50
The digital media technology of today is growing at a very fast rate and is continually
developing in many different ways. This has many advantages on the media institutions
and audiences.
There are developments of a lot more conglomerate companies which are very large
scaled and either own or have control over a lot of music/media technology.
‘Synergy’ is also quite a new development which is the word used to describe when
companies try to make more profits by putting more than one thing on the market for
example Disney films are promoted through fast food deals, CDs and soundtracks and the
selling of toys.
When returning to the music industry and the way different major’s and indie’s have an
effect on what is bought and sold or even downloaded. EMI is a good case study/example.
EMI are an industrial record company that is recognised globally. It is one of the four
largest conglomerates in the world along with Universal, Warners and Sony. Their
introduction of peer to peer things such as Bluetooth, USBs, memorycards, Youtube etc
are making it much easier to access whatever kind of music you want. They say that illegal
downloading from sites such as Kazaa, the biggest illegal music lender, and livewire are
imposing a big threat to the profits of a lot of companies. Although they own 76% of the
music industry the increase of this illegal downloading is jeopardising their income.
In 2006, iTunes made the purchase of a single (online) a mere 79p, however, this hasn’t
stopped people downloading for free both illegally and legally.
A good example to show how downloading has had an impact on institutions would be in
2006 Gnarles Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ made it to number one purely based on the number of
downloads. Another good example would be MySpace. Originally a social networking site,
it recently got taken over by the news corporation (who also own Sky) and has now
become a music sharing/downloading site with over 88 million users.
The development of technology such as MP3s, iPods and the development from
promoting vinyls to records to CDs and now to downloading/sharing through phones etc
has also had an effect on institutions and audiences. People are more likely going to buy
off the internet and transfer songs straight to their chosen device which going to effect
record stores (such as HMV) a lot. It’s actually shown that in the past few years, some
record stores have lost a staggering 20% of sales every year, which I believe to be down
to downloading mainly.
In conclusion, I believe that the growing development of digital technology in all areas is
the reason why such profits are being lost and why no one really likes to own vinyls and
records apart from the minority. Furthermore I believe that this technology will continue to
grow and slowly take over the standard way of getting music etc.
unlike the other essay this answer is not a level four response because although research has been conducted (which can be seen as he has used examples of 'go it alone' artists in this case gnarls barkley, a global music company EMI, but has bared no mention of an indie label and has only skimmed through detail of 'digital/ computerized music') in general this answer is not a level four answer becuase the candidate looks from reading it like he or she was rushed for time or did not put full effort into the response.
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