The modern music industry is a rather strange phenomenon that does not stand still and is constantly evolving. Those who have worked in the musical "kitchen" for more than one year know that it is sometimes very difficult to predict what the future holds for us musically. However, the profit system is always the same, and anyone who is serious about turning their music into hard cash would do well to at least have a basic understanding of how the music business works.

Therefore, we decided to write a small guide for the daredevils who want and intend to promote their music and earn good money from it. This is just enough information to give you a basic understanding of how the music business lives and breathes and to make you think about how you could be a part of it.

Record companies

The "traditional" path to success in the music industry is when your record is heard by a well-known label, who will then sign you to a contract to promote your work. It's even better if you've already recorded a few songs that can be included in your mini-album, or in a full-length album, or several albums on the network.

In fact, the label acts as an investor who invests their money in you and your project. This money is used to pay for studio rent, mixing and mastering, as well as paying for your advance, which is paid up front so that you can live to the point where you start receiving your share of the sales, referred to in the industry as royalties.

The label also handles all the paperwork needed to release a track/album, which includes a chart of how royalties are shared: what percentage of each coin earned goes personally to you, the collaborators, and what percentage goes to the label to cover their initial investment and receive further profits that the label could invest in your promotion again.

Musical kickbacks

The Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) pays a royalty for every copy of your track. This means that the more records you sell, the more you get. Also, if your song ends up on CDs or DVDs, or is used in any other way, then you also get a certain amount for this.
For example: there are 20 songs in the collection, and one of them is yours. This means that the Copyright Society will pay you 5% of all sales.

Long awaited release of your music

The release of your music means the use of your track in any form, and all income received after the release of your music can come from many and varied sources. In reality, money comes from every time a song is played on TV, radio, or used as a movie soundtrack, even when the track is played in Topshop's fitting rooms. The list is endless.

Theoretically, it turns out that you get money for any use of your track. This system works through collection agencies such as PRS in the UK or ASCAP (Composers, Writers and Publishers of America) in the US. These organizations track all the ways in which your music is used, then collect and distribute the money accordingly.

TV, movies and more

The main distribution channels and sources of profit in the music industry are TV, movies and video games, namely the distribution of the soundtrack of your music through these channels. The benefits of a phonogram are obvious: you get paid to use your composition; as a result, you get new income from the fact that your song is used in film projects or TV shows, for example, as a soundtrack. This use of your music allows you to increase the visibility of you and your work, as it will be heard by a potentially huge audience that was not previously familiar with your music.

It's not easy to get tracks on TV and film projects, but there are specialized production companies that will act on your behalf to push your music in one direction or another. So you can go about your business while agencies like this promote your tracks to people involved in film and television.

The need to catalog the music that will be in the record library of music companies (more recently referred to as Music Production Companies) is quite understandable. After all, it is such a catalog that is potentially the most profitable of all that you will do. As a rule, such a company will take a percentage for the promotion of your music. But you don't have to pay them up front to represent you. Payment is made on the spot. And what's even better is that they don't get paid until your music is released, which means they'll work as hard as they can to make sure everyone knows about you.

Think about Rembrandt's composition "I'll Be There For You" - the soundtrack to the series "Friends" - and how many people know him around the world ...

Other sources of income

What if you didn't write or produce anything at all? Don't worry, you can still make money from music. PPL streaming is not some typical distribution channel due to songwriters. This is an additional source of royalties paid by broadcasters to performers for the use of their music. All those involved in the creation of the song (bassists, backing vocalists, etc.) also receive a small amount of money for their work.

Distribution

The distributor is responsible for getting your music from the warehouse to the store. To do this, if you create physical content, you need to enter into a distribution agreement.
As we know, 'physical' music is lagging behind digital music in popularity, which is good news if you're starting your own label, as distribution doesn't have to be a lot of effort or expense. Digital distribution means that your recordings will be available for sale digitally in all the places your fans are waiting for. For example, Amazon, Beatport, iTunes. In other words, digital distribution saves you from unnecessary fuss in every sense.

And finally

All of the above is quite difficult to accept, but if you want to connect your life with music, then you must understand the basic mechanisms of such a huge musical machine, and you must be ready, if you really want to express yourself and leave a mark on the musical field, take on it's a matter and go to the end, no matter what.
And we wish you good luck!

How often we hear music from everywhere. Music becomes the sound background of our life. Do you know the feeling when you just forgot to take your headphones with you? Silence, no - even emptiness. Unusually, and hands tend to turn something on. The music stops playing - the inner voice turns on, but somehow I don’t want to listen to it at all. Reminds us of unfinished business, reproaches us with something, brings serious thoughts. No, a new track would have started as soon as possible. We just got used to music, got used to being not alone all the time, but with these cheerful (or not so) musical rhythms.

Probably, everyone has favorite melodies, at the sound of which lines of familiar songs pop up somewhere deep inside. At the same time, it often happens that a person knows the lyrics by heart, but he never thought about the meaning of the words imprinted in his memory and even frequently spoken words. This happens because most people are used to listening to music in the background or rest format, that is, relaxing and not thinking about anything, enjoying emotions or simply plunging into third-party thoughts.

As a result of such listening, a person's worldview is filled with texts and meanings that have not been filtered at the level of consciousness. And since the information is presented accompanied by various rhythms and melodies, it is absorbed very well, and later, from the level of the subconscious, it begins to influence human behavior. What programs of behavior are broadcast to the mass audience by modern popular music - the one that is played on TV and radio, and can it be treated unconsciously, that is, without thinking about its influence? Let's watch some videos:

After watching these videos, it is appropriate to recall the quote from the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius: “The destruction of any state begins precisely with the destruction of its music. A people without pure and bright music is doomed to degeneration.”

Please note that in the last review, it was not only about the content of specific songs, but also about the general direction of the topic of popular music. This is an important nuance that must be taken into account. After all, music should reflect different aspects of our life, and not elevate one to an inappropriate size and importance.

The creativity of a person, when it comes from the heart, always reflects his inner world, touches upon the issues of personal development, the search for answers to exciting questions. If creativity is replaced by business, and earning money comes first, then its content is automatically filled with the appropriate meanings and forms: primitive, stereotyped, insipid, stupid.

Listening to the content that is played today on and on the air of most radio stations is a real process of programming people to unconsciously implement in their lives all the behaviors listed in the videos.

At the same time, in the presented video reviews, only the content of the texts and the video sequence of the clips was analyzed, but rhythm, tonality, melody, and loudness of music have a huge impact on a person. After all, any music is, in the end, vibrations that can either harmonize with the internal state of a person, or act destructively in the literal sense.

The impact of music on society

Dissonance in music, sudden changes in rhythm, loud sound - all this is perceived by the body as stress, as a polluting factor that affects not only the nervous, but also the cardiovascular and endocrine systems. On the Internet, you can find the results of many experiments that show that if classical or folk music improves mental abilities, then modern pop music, built on the same rhythms, or heavy ragged music, on the contrary, depresses the human psyche, worsening memory, abstract thinking, attentiveness.

You can clearly see the influence of music in these pictures:

These photographs were taken by Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto. He exposed the water to various melodies and human speech, after which he froze it and photographed the resulting frozen water crystals with high magnification. As you can see on the slide, under the influence of the sounds of classical music, crystals of distilled water acquire graceful symmetrical shapes, under the influence of heavy music or negative words, emotions, frozen water forms chaotic, fragmented structures.

Considering that we are all mostly water, you can imagine what a significant influence music has on us. For this reason, the choice of those compositions that you often listen to yourself or include for children should be conscious, evaluating the impact of the music and the effect you would like to get.

Music affects a person in 3 aspects:

1. Meaningful message of lyrics and video clips
2. Music vibrations (rhythm, tonality, melody, voice timbre, etc.)
3. The personal qualities of popular performers whose lives are on display

As the third point on this slide, we highlighted the personal aspect associated with the morality of those performers who receive fame and glory. Since modern show business is built on the fact that it brings to public discussion the entire personal life of the so-called stars, imposing them on the younger generations as idols embodying "success", when evaluating modern songs, one must also take into account the lifestyle that they broadcast by their example. their performers.

Everyone has probably heard about such a popular Western singer as. Let's see what ideology she promotes with her work, and by personal example.

As part of the Teach Good project, similar reviews were made on other most popular Western performers: - and everywhere the same thing. Their career develops as if according to a pattern: from relatively simple and modest girls, having entered the show business industry, they gradually turn into those whose photographs and fruits of creativity are even embarrassing to demonstrate during a lecture due to obsessive vulgarity and vulgarity.

At the same time, it is these stars who are constantly awarded the main music awards, their videos are played on TV channels and radio stations, even here in Russia their songs are regularly played. That is, the same system is built in the music industry, based on 3 main tools: award institutions, financial flows and control over the central media.

Where to find good songs?

It is almost impossible for good performers, those who sing really meaningful songs and try to direct their creativity for the benefit of people, to break through this barrier. The situation is beginning to change only today, when with the advent of the Internet, every person has got the opportunity through their accounts in social networks, through blogging and creating websites to act as an independent mass media.

The emergence of the Teach Good project and many other associations of caring people is a natural process of destroying the old system built on strict control of persons admitted to the media. And it is on the Internet that you can find songs of those performers that you will not hear on TV, but whose music is really pleasant and useful to listen to.

They also tour cities, perform on stages, gather full houses, but their photos are not printed in glossy magazines, and their songs are not broadcast on popular radio stations or music TV channels. Because for the modern music industry, their work does not fit the “format” defined and imposed on a wide audience through all the same media, or rather, the means of forming and controlling public consciousness.

As an example of meaningful creativity, we bring to your attention one of the songs that was invented and recorded by the readers of the Teach Good project.

The beginning of the 20th century is characterized by the rapid development of the music entertainment industry. The St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society, the Moscow Philharmonic Society, the Russian Musical Society, the Circle of Russian Music, and the House of Song concert musical organization, which existed until 1918, played an important role in the development of concert activity. The musical stage during this period was mainly in the hands of a private enterprise.

The recording industry is especially active. The first record factory in Russia opened in Riga in 1902. And in 1907, the production of records was organized by the Pate company, which imported matrices from abroad (since 1922 - the “Factory named after the 5th anniversary of October”). Since 1910, the Metropol-Record factory at the Aprelevka station near Moscow has been producing records. In 1911, the factory of the Sirena-Record partnership was put into operation, which printed 2.5 million records in a year.

The State Duma adopted the law "On Copyright", which for the first time took into account the interests of sound recording companies. The Music Rights Agency for Russian Authors (AMPRA) was formed. The annual gross production in Russia amounted to 18 million gramophone records, about 20 companies operated on the market. The Aprelevka plant increased its capacity to 300,000 records a year. A "Syndicate of United Factories" was created to oppose large foreign manufacturers. However, after the outbreak of the First World War in Russia, their number decreased.

In 1915, the "Writing Cupid in Moscow" plant was put into operation. Before the revolution in Russia there were six factories producing 20 million records a year; in addition, 5-6 million were produced using imported matrices. Most of the factories were based on personal Russian capital - "Partnership of Rebikov and K?" and others.

However, at the same time, the market is also faced with the first negative phenomena in the music industry, which are also characteristic of modern show business. The first pirated records appeared, produced by the Neographon company and the St. Petersburg branch of the American company Melodifon. Entrepreneur D. Finkelstein went the furthest - his Orfenon partnership produced exclusively pirated records.

Similar phenomena occurred in music publishing houses. At the beginning of the 20th century, music publishing in Russia reached a high level of development, not inferior in terms of printing technique to foreign music publications. Such Russian music publishing houses as Jurgenson's firm won world recognition.

In the first decades of the 20th century, there were numerous music stores - firms on the periphery (Yaroslavl, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinburg, Saratov and other cities), engaged in music publishing. Music publishing houses and music shops in Russia produced catalogs of the sheet music they published, which are to this day valuable sources for studying the musical tastes of the era.

Cardinal changes in the art of music took place after the revolution of 1917. The publishing business passes into the hands of the state (Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of December 19, 1918). In 1921, music publishing houses and music printing houses were merged into a single music publishing house, which in 1922 became part of Gosizdat as its musical sector. In 1930, the music sector was reorganized into the State Musical Publishing House "Muzgiz" with a branch in Leningrad, which became the largest music publishing company.

In the same years, a number of other music publishing houses also operate, in particular, the cooperative "Tritron" (1925-1935). They published sheet music and books on music. A number of public organizations and departments are involved in the occasional release of notes: the Moscow Society of Dramatic Writers and Composers (MOPIK, 1917-1930), the All-Union Directorate for the Protection of Copyrights.

In 1939, the Musical Fund of the USSR was created under the Union of Composers, whose tasks included publishing works by Soviet composers. In 1964, "Muzgiz" and "Soviet Composer" merged into one publishing house "Music", but in 1967 they separated again. These publishing houses publish the magazines "Soviet Music" and "Musical Life".

Record production is also undergoing a period of dramatic change. This industry was nationalized. And one of the first gramophone records released under the Soviet regime was a recording of the speech of V.I. Lenin's Appeal to the Red Army. In 1919-1920. The department of "Centropechat" "Soviet plate" produced more than 500 thousand gramophone discs. These were mostly speech recordings - speeches by prominent party and public figures.

In the 1920s, production was resumed at old enterprises, and in the 1930s the All-Union Recording House in Moscow began its work. In 1957, the All-Union Recording Studio was founded. In 1964, the All-Union Firm Melodiya was created, uniting domestic factories, houses and recording studios and becoming a monopolist in sound recording for many years.

There have also been big changes in the concert activity. The organization and management of the entire industry passed into the hands of the state, which had a great influence on the ideological orientation of the performers' creativity. This was especially noticeable in the field of pop art. Special state institutions were created that organized the concert activities of artists of all genres, including pop music.

This system, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, included the State Concert, Soyuzconcert, Rosconcert, republican, regional and city philharmonic societies, concert associations that led the entire most complex concert life in our country. Free enterprise was punished by law as an illegal activity. Together, during this period, musical, educational and cultural work comes to the fore.

Concerts are held not only in the concert halls of big cities, but also in small clubs, houses of culture, in the workshops of factories, factories, state farms, collective farms, in red corners and on farms. At the same time, the artists were paid according to strictly established tariffs - from 4.5 to 11.5 rubles per concert.

With the emergence of a market economy, alternative directions begin to develop on the official stage. There are problems associated with the reorganization of this activity. The main contradiction was formed: between the personal nature of talent and the practice of appropriation by the state of his work. After all, the right to pay the contractor on demand was previously absent. The emergence of numerous firms and companies working in the musical stage has become an objective response of the new time to the increased interest of both consumers and entrepreneurs in the stage as a whole and its directions.

There are currently more than seventy public and private associations, firms, companies, and associations in Moscow that organize concert activities. Without taking into account illegal, unregistered associations, only highly professional specialist managers can manage such multifaceted activities, who must not only and not so much satisfy the growing demands of the public, but also anticipate them, clearly capturing the market situation and monitoring the activities of competitors, taking into account other factors in their work. this market, such as the solvency of the population, etc.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Similar Documents

The essence and special features of concert activity, its purpose and implementation procedure. Requirements for participants in concert programs: director, presenter, performers, musicians. Structure and characteristics of the main elements of concert activity.

control work, added 06/25/2010


Consideration of the problem of methodological support for the activities of cultural institutions. The study of the specifics of the functioning of the system of methodological support of socio-cultural activities on the example of the Murmansk Regional House of Folk Art.

term paper, added 01/04/2013


thesis, added 12/14/2010


The development of the spiritual factor in the life of adolescents as a priority in socio-cultural activities. Acquaintance with the features of the organization of socio-cultural activities among children on the basis of the Children's House of Culture named after D.N. Pichugin.

term paper, added 10/07/2017


The main directions of organizing the leisure of a rural resident in modern conditions. Diagnosis of the level of satisfaction of residents of the village of 2nd Pristan with the quality of the organization of socio-cultural activities, recommendations and methods for its improvement.

thesis, added 06/07/2015


The essence of the function of personality individualization. Goals and objectives of socio-cultural institutions, forms of socio-cultural activities. Generation as a subject of socio-cultural activity. Ways of transmitting cultural information in the process of inculturation.

test, added 07/27/2012


Mode of operation, financial and economic activities, educational process, tasks, activities and functions of the Palace of Children's and Youth Creativity. Directions of educational and methodical activity in the socio-cultural sphere.

term paper, added 01/27/2012

How It's Done: Producing in the Creative Industries

The music industry in the digital age

At the beginning of the 21st century, the industry has changed a lot. The music business has been rebuilt more than once with the development of Internet technologies. The main problems are still piracy and the weak desire of Internet users to pay for legal content. So, only in the period from 2004 to 2010, the income of the global recording industry fell by almost 31%. In 2013, for the first time, a slight increase in sales of recorded music was recorded compared to the previous year in the amount of 0.3%.5 Mainly due to official sales in the iTunesStore online store. But already in 2014, iTunesStore sales of individual tracks dropped by 11% year-on-year, from $1.26 billion to $1.1 billion, while physical media sales fell by 9%.6 In Russia, the numbers are still worse than global ones. From 2008 to 2010, legal physical media sales dropped from $400 million to $185 million, more than doubling in three years and with a piracy rate of 63%. By comparison, the US has a piracy rate of just 19%.7

The very attitude towards music, the ways of listening to it, are also changing. Popular 3-5 years ago, online stores like iTunesStore are being squeezed out of the market by streaming services like Spotify and BeatsMusic. Analysts predict that by 2019, almost 70% of all online music industry revenues will come from streaming services, while online store revenues will fall by 39%. At the same time, 23% of all users of streaming services who used to buy at least one album per month now do not buy them at all.8 Of the 210 million users of online broadcasting services, only 22% of users still have paid accounts. As music analyst Mark Mulligan points out, “The transition to a new distribution model is hampered by the need to find value that free-to-air subscribers are willing to pay for.”9

Moreover, music today needs other ways to attract a modern audience. Ways that would best meet the needs and habits of this very audience, accustomed to streaming services, gadgets, background and streaming perception of musical material.

Among the most important transformations that have occurred in the music industry, it is worth highlighting:

- a musical abundance never seen before. There is too much music today. The Internet has multiplied the offer. As a result, the listener has a glut effect. And when the listener begins to feel oversaturation, the value of the music drops. As a result, it is very difficult to attract such a jaded and tired listener. Especially when there are many other entertainments in the network besides music10;

- reducing the duration of contact with one work. If the Internet user does not like something, he immediately closes the file and switches to more exciting content11;

– the transition from downloading and storing files to streaming listening;

- attention deficit disorder of the Internet audience;

– clip perception and disintegration of large musical forms. The transition from album thinking to singles;

- Desacralization of music. Now the network is available almost everything for every taste. The user does not need to make great efforts to get the desired record. Music comes too easily. And when music is obtained without much difficulty, it does not evoke a sense of value and uniqueness;

– consumption in multitasking mode, which led to the practice of background listening. Today, a person can afford to listen to music, read an article and sit on YouTube at the same time. That is, a person goes to the Internet not for the sake of music, but for the sake of something else (for example, movies or games). Music is not an end in itself for the user. She plays in the background12;

– frequent change of trends and the need for constant updating of content caused by the FOMO effect. FOMO is “the fear of missing out on something new, being left out, an obsessive desire to be in the know.”13 The FOMO phenomenon is especially relevant to fans who are used to following the lives of idols. You can follow us on social media around the clock. But if the artist does not update the content and share something really (from the fans' point of view) important with the fans, then the interest quickly disappears14;

- synthesis with other types of art, primarily with cinema and theater;

- the multimedia content of musical material, that is, when promoting music, the accompanying video, photo and text content begins to play a significant role;

- the need to compete for the attention of the audience not only with the professional musical community, but also with "amateurs" who are allowed to try their hand at creativity and share the results of this creativity with a wide audience with relatively cheap technologies and software.

Given all the challenges that the digital revolution poses to the industry, experts from the British The Music Business School believe that today a successful promotional campaign for a musician should stand on several pillars, including:

- emphasis on the uniqueness of the artist;

- dedicated fan communities, which should be present in several major social networks at once;

- distribution of the album through the maximum possible number of resources and platforms (online stores, streaming services, mobile applications, etc.), that is, the so-called multi-platform business model;

– presence on all the most famous video hosting sites;

– involvement of fan communities in the generation and distribution of content;

- building the promotion of your music around some interesting story (or idea) that would provide its potential listeners with narrative involvement;

– offering non-standard projects that expand the possibilities of music and allow it to be “consumed” not only at concerts or through ordinary Internet listening, but also through any hybrid formats15.

Thus, the primary task for a musician is to attract the attention of as many listeners as possible and keep this attention for as long as possible. The music industry is gradually coming to the conclusion that it is difficult to attract an Internet audience with music alone. “We need a search for new forms in which musicians can now present their music. It is now clear to every musician, both a luminary and a beginner: just recording a song is not enough now, because it has every chance not to be heard,” says the leader of the Mumiy Troll group, Ilya Lagutenko16.