Comparison of Major Record Label and Independent label

Comparisons Of Major Record label and Independent Record label

There are two types of companies that make up the music industry. The first one is the Major Labels. Major Label is the one who dominates the music Industry because they have big artists such as Rihanna, JLS, Ke$ha. There are three main Major Labels. They are Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Then there is an Independents Record labels, Independents Record labels is a record labels working without funding of or outside the organization of major record labels they are small companies that specialize in low-volume sales or one particular genre of music. Most of new bands and musical acts start of as Independent labels and if they are successful Major Labels may choose to sign them up.  

                          

 The two specific companies I am going to be talking about is Sony BMG, which is a Major Label and Boy Better Know who is an Independent Record Label. Sony BMG owns 21.5% of the music Industry and Independent Record Labels own 11.4% of it.

   

The two companies I have chosen are very different from each other because Sony BMG, which is a Major Label company, makes mainly Mainstream Music. Mainstream music is what majority of public enjoys and love listening to that’s why they own more of the market compared to Boy Better Know who are an Independent label and the reason why Independent labels don’t really get far as Major labels do is because most of them only focus on one type of genre where Major does all kind of different genre such as Hip-Hop, Pop, RnB, etc. For Boy Better Know is mainly grime music that they focus on because that’s what they are really good at. The music that Boy Better Know makes which is grime is mainly for the audiences between the ages of 12- 18 teenagers male because their music is about girls and money, which relates to male audiences and also who understand slang, which makes it appeal to a very niche market.

Arties like Beyonces, Usher, Susan Boyle, JLS are all signed to Sony BMG and are one of the successful artist of today and the reason they are so successful is because those entire artist do different genre of music. For example Susan Boyle is more of classical singer but on the other hand JLS are more of Pop n RnB singers. Where on the other hand Boy Better Know has artist like Skepta, JME, Wiley who only make grime music and are not well known because of lack of marketing, and music distribution.

The other companies that are owned by Sony BMG are PlayStation which is a game console, a Blu-ray DVD player and DVDs, Sony Picture Entertainment, which is a movies making company. The few of the films that have been made by Sony are Ghost Rider, Man In Black, Spider Man, Resident Evil and many more.

Sony also uses uses horizontal integration by using Usher, Who is a well-known artist and is signed to Sony BMG. By making him appear in Sony Ericssion Advert they are using their other platforms to cross promote their artist and help boost the sells of their new phone by including a well known artist into the advert, which means Usher fans may want to support him and by the new Sony Ericssion Phone. In Boy Better Know they have used horizontal integration by having their own clothing line, and selling their clothes with their record label on them.

Sony have also synergised with other companies such as Nintendo by using their artist, such as JLS in Nintendo gaming advert. The reason most big companies work with each other is because it helps them cross promote and help them get accesses to new potential target audiences, which can help increase the sells of their artist albums, event’s, songs and helps Nintendo to sell more of their game console to the public, who maybe JLS fans.

In same way Boy Better Know have synergised with iTunes, Facebook, Tweeter to promote themselves and keep their fans, target audiences up to date with anything new, such as album, events, etc. In this way both partners gets benefits from each other. Facebook, Tweeter gets more members, visit to their website who maybe fans of artist in Boy Better Know, such as Skepta, JME.

Sony BMG uses lots of ways to promote and market their artist to make sells. For example they have used Usher in Twix adverts to promote him to a whole new target audiences by synergise with another big company, this is because people who may not know him but likes Twix see him and may want to find out about him and look him up on Google and from then they may listen to his music, which as a result will increase his audiences and help boost his sells.