Generic Research: Industry Research

Industry Research

How has the music industry changed:

• New technologies have affected the way audiences access music and music videos, streaming platforms such as Spotify and YouTube, which my audience research showed to be the most popular streaming platforms to listen to music and watch music videos, have become an easy and accessible way for the audience to access music 24/7. This has led to a huge decline in physical music sales such as CD's and records as streaming is free and more convenient for the target audience to listen to music. This decline in sales of physical products affected the music industry's revenue however, companies have learnt to adapt to this new way of streaming by selling their products to the streaming platforms not directly to the consumer. I will make sure to include links within my website to streaming platforms for my target audience to be able to access my artist's music.
• The music industry has also adapted to the loss of physical music revenue by producing more merchandise for artists such as hoodies, t-shirts, hats, socks etc, as well as CD's, records and cassette tapes as recently these have been returning as a trend. I will include a store in my website to sell merchandise for my artist following conventions of a music artist's website.

Warner Music Group:

• WMG is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate
• It is one of the 'big three' recording companies that dominate the market and third largest in the global music industry
• Current CEO is Stephen Cooper
• Record labels include; Atlantic Records, Elektra Records, Warner Bros. Records and Roadrunner Records 
• Represent artist in a range of genres, mainly pop, indie, rock and punk
• Success of WMG has been affected by changes within the music industry such as evolving technology. In the past, an increase in consumers downloading music, legally or not, caused a significant decrease in sales of physical products such as CD's and records leading to consistently decreasing revenues and profits for WMG. However, a boom in the streaming industry allowed WMG to recover by adapting to the changes, resulting in an increase in their revenues. 
• Access to WMG music video has not always been easy, in 2008 WMG had legal troubles with YouTube as they wanted more money for the music videos they had on the site, YouTube refused and as a result WMG removed all of their music videos from the site until 2009 when they finally agreed on a new amount of money. This suggests music sales could have been affected by consumers not being able to easily access and stream music videos on online, specifically YouTube as my audience research has shown that music videos are most commonly viewed on YouTube.