Major Vs Inderpendent essas

In the music industry there are two main types of music labels. Major recorded labels and independent labels> Major record labels include Sony and Universal...ect, subsidiary record labels like Heaven Records and Ninja Tune are not owed by the larger companies called parent companies who are there for owned by a conglomerate which funds all of the companies it owns. Independent music labels  have mostly niche music specific to what genre they are they  have more chocie on what artists to aproch and the artists have more control of what music they can make.

The two specific examples of companies I am going to compare are lab records an English independent record label based in the UK,
The major recorded label that I will be comparing lab records to is universal records which is one of the big 3 record labels in the world, universal have lots of artist of different styles and they are driven by money not by the quality of music they produces. Universal are based in Santa Monica, California. This is relevant because America is the largest continent consuming in the world downloading 85% of the music produced in the world each year.

 Universal market share is nearly 40 percent of the world music market after they took over EMI’s percentage of the music market.  In total Independent Record Label’s market share is 28.4% of the music market, Lab Records which be a fractional segment of this, less than 0.1 percent.

Universal is one of the largest music companies so when you look at the share amount of artists they have it is nearly 40 times the amount lab-records has.

Over a year , a major record company can take on large amounts of artists and drop whoever they think is not going to make them any money, for example, Tine Temper was dropped in a surprise move by EMI in September 2011 in a move to “shake up” their global share.

 In many cases indie’s do not have the funding to take on such a large number of artists this has some positives for the artist themselves for example the artists can have more creative control over there music and there image where as being in a large company like universal they try to change/improve artist by making them more appealing to a wide audience.  For example, Nicky Minaj’s star persona is constantly reinvented. Her “Pink Friday” album shows her with pink hair whereas in previous publicity she was represented with black hair.  This styling, when effective, results in increased record sales and publicity.

 This usually means that they have to change the style of there music or a big image change but also to appear in/on things they might not be able to on a smaller independent recorded label.

 Lab –records have a number of styles they are categorised under as their genre. E.g. Pop, Rock, indie, alternative and pop punk some artist they own are Katie sky, Adam Barnes, I cant have stand pop bands these are fairly unknown bands compared to universal; who have many genres it likes to be under but the artist that are the most well known and make them the most money are the main stream ones like: nicki minaj, ne-yo, w.i.lliam, they also have more alternative sounding music but they only get signed after they become popular.

 Lab-records has an audience that listen to the music because they would most properly be in to the alternative /pop-rock sound and have looked them up on YouTube or seen them at a small gig they may have been to, in contrast universal music has a specific target audience who will keep up with many of there main stream artists and like quite a few of the artist in their company, certain main stream artists will have a group of fans that have a name for example lady gaga’s fans are called little monsters this is another way of them making it seem like they care about there audience in a way that they can address them all in the same way. Independent labels like Lab-records do not have such a states with there artists to have specific names for them, also they may not have achieved a large enough audience to do this ,but this can benefit artists because they can have a more personal relationship with their audience and get to know some fans who regularly come to see them.

Universal is a conglomerate and owns lots of multi media company’s as well as a music company for example universal studios, universal interactive, universal pictures etc; enabling the conglomerate to use lots of multimedia areas of their company to branch out to an extended audience who use the internet and listen to the radio, also to have their artist put across all areas of media like adverts on TV, in a movie or on a sound track because the companies are all connected by the parent company, they get a huge amount of publicity without having to make deals with other companies outside of their record labels parent company. Lab records own no other companies or have any partner firms as like a lot of independent recorded companies. It has not got the funding for it. Universal uses horizontal integration to promote their artists. by using horizontal integration by taking all there different parts of the company  and then promoting the artist on every technological and media basted avert or stories they can get bombarding the country with there face, image and music this means that they have a better chance of success for example Universal uses horizontal integration to cross promote their products by getting someone signed to universal to advertise their products or to bring ratings up for their shows and to sell more of any product they are advertising . For example Jennifer Lopez is signed to Universal and Universal own NBC universal where Jennifer Lopez has appeared on the today show many times. Lots of artists will feature in films because it gives them a chance to gain a wider audience and to keep current in the medias eye; Jennifer Lopez has starred in a film called “Out of Sight” which was produced by Universal other movies she has stared in include “parker” .

Jennifer Lopez a fragrance “forever glowing” and also has been advertising a American phone network called “horizon”. However Independent labels Lab records, don’t really do horizontal integration for promotion because most of them don’t have subsidiary labels or different companies. Lab records distribute their music by using social networking sites like; Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. They also use iTunes to distribute their music. Jennifer Lopez’s audience are mainly female 17-28 so a fragrance and movies will appeal to them, the phone network will expand her audience because of the coverage on the adverts also movies will attracted a new audience for her so when she then relies a new album she has a wider audience.

  Major recorded labels promote there artists though all types of media and they Media outlets the most classic of which is radio, independent labels can get some of there artists can get on to the radio but mostly at the point of the lowest listeners. Both mainstream and Indy labels will have a website where you can access information on there artists and links to separate websites for each artist, for example universal music has a website with all there artists listed and there websites connected to it also there most active artists have advertisements and videos on there main page to promote them further. Major recorded labels can get access to television and the chart shows which give the artists they promote lots of coverage, Award shows like the ‘Brits’ that are held on the television are grate opportunity’s for the major record labels to put there biggest artists perform on a show viewed by millions, independent recorded labels hardly ever have there artists on television unless there a gust on show’s like ‘The Jules Holland show’ where they lets small independent artists perform but the coverage is a lot smaller than major recorded labels have.

Social networking sites are and easy and affective way for artists to promote themselves along with the recorded label itself. Larger artists have more followers on twitter and friends on facebook because of all the other bits of media they bombarded the public for example from universal ‘die antwoord’ who has vevo, facebook, twitter and YouTube clips all connected to there website using synergy to then connect the audience to all accepts of the music and there life also a shop where you can get clothing and toys made by them all publicity that will. From lab records ‘Hellogoodbye’ is the band I looked at .I found that none of there artists are featured in vevo videos, this may be because vevo only feather main stream and popular artist.

 When looking at lab records in comparisons with universal music I see that there are similarity’s between them such as they both promote there artists thro iTunes also that they have websites for each artist feathering videos on YouTube, both lab records and universal use synergy to make it easier for the artists audience to use there website and also get more publicity out of one artist.

 To conclude lab records and universal have many things in common for example their jobs as recorded labels  are same, to get there artists out to the audience but universals motive is mostly profit based where as lab records do it to create good music the audience will like. Other differences include how the two company’s  market shares ,universal owns 40% where as lab records own less than 0.01% this is a significant defence. Some of the main differences are within the advertisement and publicity areas, for example the way in which universal can put there artists in adverts, movies, fashion lines and promote them through radio sections ,web casts and other multimedia ways to get there music across .Lab records has less of a voice when it comes to the way they advertise and promote ,they use social media and YouTube a lot more often but there is no TV coverage or movie opportunities given to them because there not part of a major recorded compares or their conglomerate, also they do not have the funds to achieve these things either believe that both universal and lab records are in the biasness to create music but each have different styles and ways of doing it ,lab records could maintain a artist who gets in to the mainstream charts and then lab records would earn more money and may even be approached by a larger company like universal to buy there label this is the usual process of small independent  record  labels ,lab records would want to be part of a conglomerates chain of record labels because it would mean more funding and publicity but they may have to compromise the music they like and there niche of music to keep getting the funding .this in fact  may be the reason they are still an independent record label. Finally to conclude the main similarity between the two compares is that they both support new artists and help them on their music career but the main difference is how they do the .