How was music marketed in the mid to late 20th century?
The music business is known for selling music as a product. Essentially, the record labels help musicians to record their songs, manufacture the recording as a mass of CDs, vinyl, cassettes, etc and sell them in retail stores. In order to increase sales, several promotional strategies are created. The most important tool is airing the songs through radio and TV. The number of sales relates to the exposure of the music in the media. In 1925, a radio broadcast of the Irish tenor, John McCormack’s unreleased recording, and the exposure resulted in orders for 150,000 copies. Artists like Madonna, Duran Duran were promoted to star status in the 1980s because of considerable exposure on the channel (Shuker, 2008).
The introduction of MTV in 1981 was a complete game changer in the marketing of music. They became a specific channel to show music (music videos) of artists. If the record label sees extreme monetary success in an artist, they would usually fund their music and produce music videos for songs that they believe will become hits.
The traditional media also played an important role as gatekeepers. According to Shuker (2008), there are several gatekeepers in the music industry, deciding who will record an album, how to market a song through the media, and what people will listen to. Therefore, the connection between media and music keeps remains close.
How do musicians market their music now?
The emergence of streaming platforms such as SoundCloud, Spotify, Youtube, etc made the music market accessible to all people. A lot of amateur musicians were able to get famous by uploading their music to free sites (eg. Soundcloud).
Youtube, has been a big promoter for artists, be they independent or signed musicians. Through publishing their music on Youtube, the audience gets to see all sides of the musicians' creativity.
However, throughout the 20th century and 'till now, record labels have been the main reason for artists' success. They make this possible by investing money into artists, and music promotions such as adverts, social media partnerships, and guest events.
Nowadays record labels push for a 360 as it's a much low risk for the label. A 360 deal means the label takes a percentage from all artists' activities such as digital sales, concerts, merchandise, endorsements, media guesting, songwriting, and publishing revenue.
How do and have the big labels market music?
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Record labels are essentially the brand or trademark of music. They are in charge of the distribution, marketing, promotion, and, production of a song or an album. Labels are also responsible for enforcing copyright laws, if their artists get a copyright claim, they are the ones who deal with talking to lawyers, etc. Labels are also scouts for new artists, if they find big potential for amateur musicians they will offer them a contract. The three major labels (Universal, Sony, Warner Bros), overall these three record labels hold a 68% share of the music recording market.
Record labels set terms & conditions of artists' contracts in their favor. Most of the time, newly signed artists don't have much control over what type of music they make, even with songwriting, song beats, and the album creation process. Due to the label's strong influence, artists still cling to them even if they earn less revenue than the company. This is normalized because in a way it's a mutual benefit. If the artist gets really famous, they essentially gain a status that allows them to have more demand with their label in terms of creative control (eg. Taylor Swift). When their value goes up, their record labels are more lenient with negotiating.
What forms of media are used to distribute music?
Long before the advent of recorded music or live radio transmissions came reproduced sheet music, allowing those able to read music and play an instrument to recreate the most popular compositions of the day. The first machine-printed music appeared around 1473 – about 20 years after the invention of the printing press – effectively setting in motion the beginnings of a music industry that was about more than just performers, events, and instruments. Composers could now create pieces intended for amateur musicians to reproduce, and popular composers’ fame could spread much faster and in a more tangible way than before. By the 19th Century, the music industry was largely composed of sheet music reproduction.
It’s somewhat surprising to think that the first iteration of the record player – the phonograph – was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison and that people were visiting ‘phonograph parlors’ in the 1890s, which were a rudimentary equivalent of a jukebox. Poor-sounding records made from brittle, scratchy shellac became popular in the first few decades of the 20th Century – but it wasn’t until the more durable vinyl records were introduced in the 1930s that the format started to become seriously popular and a big money-spinner.
Vinyl remained the dominant format until the late 1970s when the sound quality of cassette tapes had improved sufficiently to allow them to rival records. ABBA’s ‘The Visitors became the first commercially released music compact disc in 1981. The big advantages of using cassettes were, they had a longer run time of 20mins, as well as being portable, by 1960 the cassette tape was $3 dollars as opposed to a Vinyl album which was $6.
By the early 1990s, CDs had become the dominant format. The CD was born this was before online music, this became the most sophisticated way of storing music, they could hold up to 80 minutes of music. The CD was invented by James Russell, and the final product was sold in 1982, on its 25th anniversary in 2007 there had been estimated to be 200 billion sales worldwide.
As internet connections improved and hard disk space became cheaper, the illegal sharing of music through the internet became more and more prevalent, with little provided in the way of comprehensive legal services. It’s estimated that worldwide revenues for recorded music fell by 50% between 1999 and 2009, which would force the industry to adapt in ways it had never previously imagined.
Before labels had a chance to chance to adjust to the emerging model of digital music, Napster arrived and disrupted the industry like nothing had before. Crucially, the industry at large failed to acknowledge the changing tides, largely choosing to stick their heads in the sand until they really felt the effects.
Napster’s peer-to-peer application launched in June 1999, focusing on the sharing of MP3 music files and allowing users to search for and download tracks with relative ease. It was the first widely used music downloading service of any kind, with 80 million registered users at its peak. It was particularly popular for sharing hard-to-find recordings, such as live sets, demos, unreleased mixes, and so on.
Metallica, Dr. Dre, and the Record Industry Association of America all filed lawsuits against Napster for copyright infringement in 2000, setting the wheels in motion for the service’s demise. Napster lost, and after failing to comply with court orders to monitor and restrict access to copyrighted music files, shut down in July 2001. The company announced bankruptcy in 2002, and its intellectual property and trademarks were purchased by another company. After changing hands several times, the name was eventually merged with the music streaming service Rhapsody.
After Napster came to a plethora of other sites and services allowing people to download music and other copyrighted files for free. Downloads sites such as Rapidshare, Zippyshare, and Megaupload began taking chunks out of record label sales, as did torrent services – which allow users to download different sections of one file from multiple sources at once to enable faster download and upload speeds.
While many artists and labels worked to prohibit websites that distributed links to torrent files for their works, some embraced the new mechanic as a distribution mechanism. Artists and labels to have distributed music and videos via torrents include Sub Pop, Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twin, The Libertines, and DJ Shadow – who became the first artist in history to sign a deal with BitTorrent to receive payment every time someone downloaded his new release through the platform. Around 2014, courts around the world issued notices requiring internet service providers to block sites that were knowingly aiding in the dissemination of copyrighted works through torrents (and other means).
Apple’s iTunes Store arrived in April 2003, heralding the beginning of the download era proper. At the time, it was the only digital download store to offer the catalogs of all five of the major record labels and aimed to provide a legal alternative to illegal peer-to-peer filesharing sites. By 2008 it became the biggest music vendor in the USA, and by early 2010 it had become the world’s largest.
Beatport was launched the following year, in January 2004. It quickly became the leading electronic music download store and continues to be to this day. It was purchased in 2013 by Robert F.X. Sillerman’s SFX Entertainment for a reported $50 million. It took some time for the digital download market to mature. In the US, revenues from digital music sales surpassed physical sales for the first time in 2012, while in the UK it took until 2014 for this to happen.
Spotify launched in 2008, allowing users to listen to uninterrupted music of their choice from a huge catalog for a monthly subscription fee – or to listen to a limited amount with adverts played between every few songs. It soon became the most popular fully licensed streaming service in many of the markets it operates. At the time of writing, Pandora leads Spotify in the US, while Spotify leads in many other countries around the world.
Spotify – and indeed other streaming sites – have faced criticism for the low revenue-per-stream the service generates for artists. In their defense, Spotify has stated that 70% of their revenues go to rights-holders and argued that their service diverts people from illegal download and streaming sites that don’t generate revenue for artists. It has also been suggested that artists should compare revenue-per-stream rates to publishing royalties accrued from the radio play of a song, rather than that of downloads. Thom Yorke and Taylor Swift are among the prominent artists to have pulled their entire catalogs from Spotify.
YouTube remains the biggest music streaming platform overall across the world, although a huge proportion of music on the platform has been uploaded without the rights holder's consent or without generating revenue for them. Their Content ID system identifies uploads of copyrighted music through waveform recognition and allows rightsholders to place adverts on uploads containing their works – or have them blocked.
Ever since the Covid-19 Pandemic, there has been a drastic increase in the prosumers of Tiktok. Famous artists have Tiktok accounts for promotion and to also engage with their fans. For example, in October 2022, Taylor Swift announced her newest album "Midnights".
She used TikTok as a platform to announce the track titles by launching a mini-video series called "Midnights Mayhem with Me". This is a very smart strategy to continuously hook loyal fans and to also have her content pop up on other people's "for you page". This increases her engagement and if her videos on TikTok are monetized (which is likely) then she also increases revenues.
For new artists, sometimes they stage a Q & A on Tiktok wherein someone (eg. a person from their company) would comment or ask "Can I hear your written songs?) and then they will post a video response. A recent example is a new artist GAYLE, her song abcdef went viral on TikTok after a marketing strategy they staged. This song was even nominated for the Grammys.
Old and relatively not as known songs are also getting famous, as prosumers use them as sound for their lipsyncs, mini-vlog, and dances. For example, the song "Beggin" was originally by the duo Madcon (2007). An Italian band called "Måneskin" covered the song and it blew up on Tiktok. Måneskin also bagged the 2021 Eurovision Award. For some other artists, Tiktok allows their known and successful songs to be famous and even be back on the charts.