1) Universal Music Group
The first media conglomerate is UMG. The UMG sells more music than any other major label. They accounted for for 25.5% of the market in 2005. Universal Music Group operates as a subsidiary of the French media conglomerate Vivendi and is said to be the largest music cooperation in the world. UMG's well known label imprints include: Geffen, Interscope, Motown and Universal.
Universal Music Group co-developed Vevo, a site designed for music videos which allows for free, ad-supported streaming of music videos and other music content.
Some of the key artists are: Kanye West, Gwen Stefani, Mariah Carey, 50 cent, The 1975 and Bon Jovi.
2) Sony BMG Music Entertainment
Song BMG Music Entertainment is the second biggest major record label in music sales. They account for 21.5% of the market in 2005. Sony BMG Music Entertainment was a record music company, which was a 50-50 join venture between Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann AG.
The company signed a content deal with the popular video sharing community YouTube.
On August 2005, 2008 Sony Corporation agreed to buy Bertelsmann AG's 50 percent stake in the music company for $1.2 billion to get full control. The music company will be renamed Sony Music Entertainment Inc. and will become a unit of Sony Corporation of America.
Sony Music Entertainment Japan, which was not a part of Sony BMG, distributed Japanese Music in the US through Columbia or Epic, since around March 2007 when previous distributor, Tofu Records, was closed down.
The company's well-known label imprints include Arista, Columbia, Epic, J, Jive and RCA.
Some of the key artists are: Kelly Clarkson, Alicia Keys, Outkast, Shakira and Britney Spears.
3) EMI Group
The EMI Group is the third biggest major record label in music sales. They accounted for 13.4% of the market in 2005. EMI Group Limited, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, was a British multinational music recording and publishing company, and electronics device and systems manufacturing company.
Before it's break up in 2012, EMI was the fourth largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and was one of the big four record companies (now big three).
The record labels under this company include: EMI Records, Parlophone, Virgin Records and Capitol Records. EMI Group also had a major publishing arm, EMI Music Publishing - based in London with offices globally.
The group's well-known label imprints include: Astralwerks, Capitol, EMI, Mute and Virgin.
Some of the key artists are: Coldplay, The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Robbie Williams.
4) Warner Music Group
The Warner Music Group is the fourth major record label in music sales. They accounted for 11.3% of the market in 2005. The company operates some of the largest and most successful recording labels in the world, including it's flagship labels Warner Bros. Records, Parlophone Records and Atlantic Records.
WMG owns Warner/Chappell Music, one of the world's largest music-publishing companies. With a multi-billion dollar annual turnover, WMG employs in excess of 3,500 people and has operations in more than 50 countries throughout the world.
The group's well-known imprints include Asylum, Atlantic, Lava, Reprise, Rhino and Warner Bros.
Some key artists are: Green Day, Madonna, Ed Sheeran, James Blunt and Jess Glynne.
Spotify
Spotify is a music streaming that provides digital rights management restricted content from record labels and media companies. Music can be browsed or searched by artist, album, genre, playlist or record label. Spotify offers two music streaming tiers: Spotify Free and Spotify Premium. Paid "premium" subscriptions remove advertisements, improve audio quality and allows users to download music for offline listening.
One downfall for Spotify is that the site fails to compensate artists fairly. Some examples of this are:
In 2009, Swedish musician Magnus Uggla
pulled his music from the service, stating that after six months he had earned
"what a mediocre busker could earn in a day". Norwegian newspaper
Dagbladet reported in 2009 that the record label Racing Junior earned only NOK
19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times. According
to an infographic by David McCandless, an artist on Spotify would need over
four million streams per month to earn US$1,160. Luke Lewis wrote that
"the 'free' aspect of Spotify is unsustainable" and that "if
Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business".
In September 2011, US independent label
Projekt Records stated, "We (the audience) believe in the value of what
artists create. The artist's passion, dedication and expression is respected
and rewarded. Spotify is NOT a service that does this. Projekt will not be part
of this unprincipled concept." In May 2012, British Theatre vocalist and
Biffy Clyro touring guitarist, Mike Vennart, stated: "I'd sooner people
stole my work than stream it from [Spotify]. They pay the artists virtually
nothing. Literally pennies per month. Yet they make a killing. They've forced
the sales way down in certain territories, which wouldn't be so bad if the
bands actually got paid."
Apple Music
Apple Music is a music streaming service by
Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on demand. The service
includes the curated Internet radio station Beats 1, the blog platform Connect
for artists to share media with fans, and Radio which incorporates some aspects
of iTunes Radio. Apple Music provides music recommendations based on user taste.
Apple Music received mixed reviews at
launch for its unintuitive interface,the amount of bugs and battery life
problems and its offline services being contingent on using the iCloud Music
Library feature. This feature takes away the ability for the user to sync music
locally and has caused chaos for some users' music libraries. However, the
service was praised for its smart functions.
Shortly before Apple Music was released,
Taylor Swift wrote an open letter publicly criticizing Apple's decision to not
reimburse artists during a user's three-month free trial period and announced
that she would be holding back her album 1989 from the service. She said the
policy was "unfair" as "Apple Music will not be paying writers,
producers, or artists for those three months". UK independent record label
Beggars Group also criticized the three-month trial period, saying it struggled
"to see why rights owners and artists should bear this aspect of Apple's
customer acquisition costs".
The day after Swift's letter, Eddy Cue
announced on Twitter that Apple had changed its policy and that Apple Music
"will pay artist for streaming, even during customer's free trial
period". On Twitter, Swift wrote "After the events of this week, I've
decided to put 1989 on Apple Music... And happily so". She concluded
saying it was "the first time it's felt right in my gut to stream my
album".
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