Music Marketing
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Introduction
The landscape of music industry nowadays has changed from the past. Due to the rapid developments in technology, music marketers benefit from numerous channels of distribution for their products and services while also facing the inevitable problem of piracy.
Ogden (2011) noted that marketing is the process of identifying needs and satisfying these needs with suitable goods or services, through product design, distribution, and promotion. Applied to music marketing, the goods or services become the music and services, such as iTunes that provide music. Ogden also suggested that the creation of the music product begins with the artist. Marketing comes into play to ensure the music is heard. Thus publishing, packaging, distribution and sale of music occur.
According to Ogden (2011), As the marketing profession has undergone a transformation with the move from a product orientation to a customer- centric orientation, so has music marketing. This paper will go through the history and examine the evolution of music marketing, to see how the marketing industry and strategies change, and discuss the possible future of current music marketing.
Body
Brief Introduction of Music Marketing
The command of the music industry has changed in the modern world due to the quick growth of technology. Music marketers have benefited from this phenomenon because there are more channels of distribution for products and services (James et al, 2011).
2.1.1
Early History
The processes of formal composition and printing music occurred for the most of music industry with the support of patronage from aristocracies and churches until the 18th century. After that, in the mid-to-late 18th century, performers and composers, for example, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart started looking for business opportunities to market his own music and performances to the common public (Krasilovsky et al, 2007).
After Mozarts death, his wife, Constanze Weber continued the action of commercialization of her husbands music through an unprecedented series of memorial concerts, selling his manuscripts, and having cooperation with her second husband, Georg Nissen, on a biography of Mozart (Glover, 2005).
Afterward, in the 19th century, sheet-music publishers occupied the music industry. The music industry began in tandem with the growth of blackface minstrelsy in the United States. The group of music publishers and songwriters, in the United States became recognized as Tin Pan Alley, in the late period of that century (James et al, 2011).
2.1.2
Advent of Recorded Music
In early 20th century, the business became getting interested in publishing sheet music, as a result, the recording of sound started to function as a disruptive technology (Salzman, 2002). In the late 1880s, the phonograph records of musical performances began to be released for sale. Later in the 1920s, the popular radio broadcasting started and changed how music could be heard permanently (Salzman, 2002).
Although there were still opera houses, concert halls and clubs continuing to produce music and perform live, the influence of radio made unknown bands popular on a nationwide and sometimes worldwide scale. The “record industry” finally took the place of sheet music publishers and became the largest force in this industry, and a variety of record labels sprang up in this period, too (Salzman, 2oo2).
On the other hand, the experiment of combining recorded music with films started around 1889 by the assistant of Thomas Edison. This experimentation failed in the end. The combination of films and music did not take hold until Warner Brothers teamed up with Western Electric to create the “Vita Phone”. Movie producers found that they could make money by combing music and film and the main studies secured synchronization rights, letting them to add music to films. (Ogden et al, 2011)
According to Ogden (2011), In 1929, Warner Brothers successfully combined taking, singing and dancing in the movie The Broadway Melody. After that, music in film got more and more secure as time passed.
2.1.3
Rise of Digital Distribution
All the largest record labels have reported a significant decrease in overall revenues from recorded music sales to customers in the first decade of the 21st century. On the contrary, digital sales have a consistent growth (McCardle, 2010). For example, according to Forrester Research (Goldman, 2010), revenues in the U.S. declined by half over a decade, from a high of $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in 2009. It indicates that digital sales have surpassed physical sales.
This dramatic decrease in revenue has lead to large-scale layoffs inside the music industry, caused some retailers out of business and forced record companies, producers, studios, recording engineers and musicians to find new business models (Knopper, 2009).
Introduction of Music marketing
2.2.1
The Movement of Music Marketing
Music marketing can be divided into different levels. The first level is interpersonal music marketing (Ogden et al, 2011). While a musician and a listener connect because of music, marketing is happening at the interpersonal level. The essence to the development and definition of music marketing are the self-expression and group belongingness. There exists personal emotion and association (Aiello and Sloboda, 1994) between writers, performers and those who consume music. This emotion and connection build the foundation of music and music marketing and allow the musician and consumer to associate at the interpersonal level. This first level of music is marketed through the audio transmission of material for self-expression. Ogden (2011) noted that, in this instance, the artist is the producer and those people who enjoy the music are the consumers. In respect to marketing strategies, the first step in music marketing starts with displays made by performer. Musicians promote emotions (Ogden et al, 2011). For instance, a musician in pain might be intending to provoke feedback on their feelings by persuading an audience to buy into the emotional appeal. Performers are usually conscious of a yearning emotional effect from their music. Oftentimes the value of marketing of music might be unintentional on the basis of consumers interpretation. Whether initially planned or externally interpreted, the music advocates an external party to gain the ideas and or emotions of the music (Justin and Persson, 2002).
Therefore,