What Is
Your Role in the Music Business?
NB: For this question, you will need to
look at 25 CDs in your music collection (or 25 downloads, each
representing a different album). If you don't yourself own 25
CDs, add those of your friends/roommates, etc. For the second
question use only your own music collection--whether it is less than 25
or far more than 25 items.
1. Go through "your" music collection (of 25 CDs). Chart
your collection by the five major labels (Universal, BMG, Sony, Warner
Music, EMI, inc. their subsidiaries), and the independent labels.
List all the 25 artists, their labels, and whether those labels are
from one of the majors or one of the independents.
To figure out the parent company of the label, look at the fine print
or go online and do some digging (see the two links below).
For example, the Warner Musical Group, (as of last year, at
least!) includes the following labels:
- the "Atlantic Group" (Atlantic, Rhino, Atlantic Classics, Atlantic
Nashville, Beggars Banquet, Big Beat, Celtic Heartbeat, Curb, Lava,
Mammoth, Matador, Mesa/Bluemoon, 143, TAG);
- "Elektra Entertainment Group" (Elektra, EastWest, Asylum,
Elektra/Sire);
- "Warner Bros. Records (Warner Bros., Reprise, Grant, Maverick, Qwest,
WarnerBros./Nashville, Warner Bros./Reprise Home Video, American
Recordings, Slash);
- "Warner Music International (Teldec, Erato, Nonesuch, Finlandia,
cold Blue, Carrere, DRO, WEA Latin, PWL, ZIT, rooArt, Magneoton, UFO,
Fazer, Telegram, Continental, London/Sire Records;
- joint ventures with labels such as former indie SubPop (49% ownership)
2. Compute where your music money goes. Read the following article from
Rolling Stone (if you haven't already):
www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6558540
Then add up the total number of CDs that you own. Multiply that
number by the typical retail price of $15.99 to determine the
approximate cost of your collection. Then referencing the chart
at the end of the Rolling Stone article, figure where your money
went. (If your music was downloaded for free, figure out how much
money was "lost" to each part of the industry as a result.)
FROM ROLLING STONE: "This breakdown of the cost of a typical
major-label release by the independent market-research firm Almighty
Institute of Music Retail shows where the money goes for a new album
with a list price of $15.99.
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead"
Further questions:
3. Can you be a serious music fan and support artists you like,
yet resist the dominant music companies?
4. Do you see a qualitative difference in content and style
between the independent label recordings and major label recordings?
5. Wal-Mart sells the most CDs in the US, but it will not carry
albums with advisory labels or with packaging that it deems to be
"offensive." Because of this, recording labels often produce
special edited releases for distribution at Wal-Mart. Should
Wal-Mart or other major distributors have influence over content and
packaging?
For help in your search about record labels and ownership, check out:
http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/record.html
http://www.cjr.org/resources/
Note: The first two parts (charting music library and calculating cost is not included in the page count (only parts 3, 4 and 5 are).