The music industry has changed a lot over time, especially in the last 10 years. Streaming has changed the way we listen to music, and is more popular than ever – Spotify currently has 130 million premium subscribers. Streaming currently makes up 80% of the music industry’s revenue, and CDs, which have drastically declined in sales over the past decade, now only make up 9% of the industry’s revenue. Vinyl has made a comeback, but nowadays most artists make the majority of their money through streams and selling merchandise, whereas this was previously made by selling CDs and vinyls.
These are all things I will have to bear in mind when designing my website. Having links to streaming platforms will be essential, and will encourage people who visit the website to download the music (especially since streaming is very popular amongst my target demographic). Featuring a merchandise store on my website will also be a good idea, as this is one of the main ways artists make money. On this merchandise store I will feature products such as t-shirts and hoodies, as well as the option to purchase the album digitally, or purchase the physical copy on vinyl. Vinyls may not make as much money for artists as they used to, but they are still quite popular amongst my target demographic (my website research showed me this, as all the websites I looked at had the option to purchase vinyl albums on their merchandise store).
What role does Warner Music Group play in the industry?
Warner Music Group (WMG) is a record label conglomerate owned by Warner Bros. It’s one of the ‘big three’ recording companies along with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, and WMG owns some of the largest and most successful labels in the world, including Atlantic Records, Parlophone, Warner Records, and Elektra Records. There are a lot of big mainstream artists signed to Warner, such as Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran, and Charlie Puth, but the label also signs some smaller artists, such as Cavetown and Hobo Johnson. This means that there are a range of music videos produced by artists signed to Warner, from large scale productions intending on appealing to a large mainstream audience, to smaller productions made mainly for fans of the artist. My music video will be more like the latter, because of both the record label and my target demographic (a socially conscious, 16-25 year old, middle to upmarket demographic, rather than a big mainstream audience).
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