1. Indie vs. Conglomerate: The Smiths
2. Merch: The Smiths vs. Ed Sheeran
3.Convergence and Digitisation Case Studies
4. User-Generated Content (UGC)
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1. Indie company vs. Conglomerate: The Smiths Case Study
The Smiths were originally signed to an independent record label, which usually gives artists more control over their work, because indie companies are not subsidiaries of largerconglomerates, and because of this stereotypically have low budgets - The Smiths were counter- typical in the sense that the did not have a large amount of artistic freedom, as they were told to re-record their first studio album by the owner of the label they were originally signed to, Rough Trade Records.
The rights to their music was later sold to Warner Music Group, a conglomerate, a company
which owns, either entirely or partially, subsidiary companies. As conglomerates receive either a portion of or all profits made by their subsidiaries, but also fund them, they have a high level of control over what these subsidiary companies produce.
The three most successful current record labels in the world are referred to as the ‘Big Three’ (Universal, Sony, Warner), and make approx. 62.4% of global profits, and 77% of uk revenue (digitalmusicnews.com).
Music video began to decline in the 1990’s, with channels such as MTV (Music Television) changing from showing music videos to daytime television shows such as Downtown and Real World. Lack of easy accessibility made the music video less popular, which was only enforced after the most popular platforms were destroyed. However, when platforms became easily accessible again in the early 2000’s with the production of smartphones, tablets and YouTube, the rise of Web 2.0, which blurred the line between audience and artist by turning the relationship into a two-way street (top-down linear producer and consumer to interaction and user-generated content) began.
Platforms such as YouTube have helped to keep old music and music videos intact and accessible to new generations, whereas in the past music and music videos were transient occurrences. The convergence and digitization of media has also produced an incline in nostalgic marketing tactics- as suggested in the book Retromania, recent increases in remasterings, rereleases and special boxsets, and editionalising are becoming increasingly exploited by companies: A remastering of The Smiths - The Queen is Dead album was released in 2017, both digitally and on vinyl.
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2. Merch: The Smiths vs. Ed Sheeran Case Study
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3. Convergence And Digitisation Case Studies
With the rise of online streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, albums make up significantly less of artists and companies income - some artists such as Taylor Swift taking their music off the platforms due to how little they get paid per stream.
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| Headline from Time magazine |
This has taken a toll on the larger companies (the Big Three), but it's even more difficult for indie artists, such as AEM. This has led to many new strategies to deal with the disruption of the changing market:
Lady Gaga and Starbucks:
To raise awareness for her Born This Way foundation Lady Gaga had a tie-in with starbucks, with a group of expensive drinks that fund it, as well as working at Starbucks for a day. The profits all went to her charity, but as a publicity stunt it gathered mass attention on twitter, and various news outlets.
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Radiohead's pay-what-you-want:
In 2007 Radiohead adopted a pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing strategy for their album In Rainbows, exclusively through their website.Fans could even download it for free. In the first 29 days, 1.2 million people visited their website.
"If Radiohead had sold this album through a recording company, price of this album would be about $14.99 and Radiohead would receive about 15% of this total ($2.25). Radiohead’s share would be even less ($1.40) if this album was sold via iTunes. Since, they opted with PWYW pricing strategy, 38% who downloaded the album paid something, at an average payment of $6.² This resulted in an average payment of $2.26 across everyone who downloaded this album. 62% people opted to download for free." - medium.com
the hype surrounding this strategy, as an exclusive and time-limited offer is part of what made it so successful, in the long run, this would not be a brilliant strategy to adopt. However, the fact that they are able to blur this line between producer and consumer and interact with the audience in this way demonstrates the power of Web 2.0 and digitisation, as they were able to do this entirely independently and successfully (this album alone made them more money than all their previous albums put together).
However, without an already established fan-base, I doubt this would be a successful strategy for an indie artist like AEM.
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4. User-Generated Content
Fanfiction to Film:
This massive blurring of the line between producer and consumer can be seen Anna Todd's Harry Styles fanfction After. Published originally on Wattpad, the fanfiction was adapted to be published as a romance novel with the names changed (from Harry Styles to Hardin Scott), and was recently adapted into the financially successful film of the same name.
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This convergence due to the improvement of technology and the internet has led to great financial success for many indie publishers and music artists: the hit Netflix original The Kissing Booth, (also based on a Wattpad story) has a sequel coming out this year, and perhaps the more infamous Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James was originally a Twilight fanfiction called Master of the Universe written under the pen name Snowqueens Icedragon (not to be confused with the incredible animated classic He-Man and the Masters of the Universe).
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Lyric Videos:
UGC in the music industry used to take the form of lyric videos, however artists themselves are now capitalising on that, releasing official lyric videos. This allows for indie artists to publish more of their own content, yet limits audience interaction.
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Online Streaming:
On the flip side of this, convergence and digitisation allows for indie artists to distribute their own content on sites such as YouTube, Soundcloud and BandCamp. It was a treat for me when watching Alice Phoebe Lou perform live in a tiny venue, she announced that her next song would be one most people wouldn't know, as it was a single lost in the depths of Soundcloud titled Lost in LA.
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Unboxing:
unboxing videos of vinyl (retromania), cds and digipaks created by fans have been around as long as YouTube, and the fan generated content helps publicise and distribute the album, but once again bands themselves are capitalising on this and releasing their own unboxing videos. Metallica is a prime suspect once again, releasing "official" unboxings led by band members. But the examples below show that perhaps it's not a terrible thing that official unboxing videos are becoming more common, as some fan ones are painful to site through:
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