Big Three Sony Universal Warners

In film its the big six (7 if you count Lionsgate); in the music industry, following a controversial 2012 $2bn takeover of EMI by Universal, its just the big three: Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group. Sony and Universal also combine on the VEVO platform.

See: thebalance.com feature on the big 3; musicbusinessworldwide.com (the spin on this one is a bit odd - that the ENTIRE Indie industry beats any one of the big three individually); digitalmusicnews.com; this pdf.

Table from digitalmusicnews.

You can see how the industry has gone through dramatic 'disruption' from digitisation - but with little impact on the market share of the dominant conglomerates:

Source: p.11 of this report (pdf).

Daft Punk - TechnoLogic vid

ACT: DAFT PUNK
TRACK: TECHNOLOGIC
ALBUM: HUMAN AFTER ALL
YEAR: 2005
GENRE: HOUSE/DANCE-POP
AUDIENCE: 18-24+ (by now 15-34)
DIRECTOR: DAFT PUNK (3rd self-directed vid)



By 2005 Daft Punk were a major act, with massive worldwide singles and albums behind them and the backing of one of the world's biggest record labels, EMI (through their subsidiary label Virgin), to boot. This shows in the video: it may lack shot variety in large part, but the budget is there for all to see with the central robot figure an impressive hybrid of the Terminator and Chucky from the Child's Play franchise. The distinct horror overtones are something we might more easily associate with industrial music, which tends to display a strand of technophobia, and also points to a band willing to sacrifice daytime screenings to target their core, club-going 18-24/18-34 audience. It would be hard to see this getting airtime pre-watershed.

The layers of intertextuality don't stop with what appear to be straightforward horror/sci-fi film signifiers though: the track gained wide exposure through being sampled in a Busta Rhymes track (with Missy Elliott on vocals); the track was used for both an iPod ad and a Motorola phone ad, featured in top-rated teen drama The OC (which has a wide global following), in 2009 was featured in two separate car ads. As the track's Wiki further reports:

It is a playable track on the iOS games Tap Tap Revenge and Tap Tap Dance, and was sampled for the video game DJ Hero. In an episode of the TV show America's Best Dance Crew, crew Kaba Modern performed to a master mix of this song on February 7, 2008. "Technologic" was also featured in the game Dance Central 2.

What we also see is another Daft Punk trait: anonymising the duo in the act. The doll itself could act as a stand-in for the animations they did in the past, but we also get two futuristic guitar-playing characters, dressed like security men or police with their full-face dark helmets. Their movement is notably minimal and stiff.

Another really key feature is the link up between the vid and the stage set: the mysterious, enigmatic pyramids formed a centrepiece of the tour that was already ongoing when this video was released. As we've seen, since 2005 the change in the music business from a product-sales industry to a live performance + merchandise + archive (long tail) sales industry has been pronounced, and this was an early indicator of a band that saw that change coming - as an act advertising iPods, a key driver of that drive, should!

The length of takes is quite remarkable, and perhaps an attempt to stand out from the crowd: its certainly counter-intuitive to have such a slow-paced video. Arguably the sheer splendour of their mise-en-scene, together with the impressive SFX, is doing the hard work for them, but it still seems odd and a little unsatisfying. Its not the only time we've seen this: the iconic Da Funk video featured many such long takes too.

INDUSTRY Universal-EMI Monopoly?

I've posted several times on this, and will add links to all below at some point, but here's a fresh angle on this story - which is ideal to help you show some knowledge and understanding of the economic operation of the music biz, as well as the impact of digitisation. The story features Universal, so should remind you of the concepts you came across when studying British cinema...

The proposed 'merger' of Universal and EMI (basically, the British giant EMI being swallowed up by the US giant Universal) has been very controversial and may now be blocked as US politicians in the Senate have argued this would endanger competition in digital media, and threaten to push up CD prices by reducing competition. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/03/mediabusiness-emi.

I notice also that Universal have been providing the music used at the Olympics, a handy spot of global advertising there (their fellow Vivendi subsidiary NBC, the US TV network, are broadcasting the Games in the US): http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/04/olympic-stadium-music-locog.

INDUSTRY: EMI sale creates Big 3

With the announcement that EMI is being bought up as two packages by Sony and Universal, the already absurd concentration of ownership that was the big 4 now becomes the big 3, as I blogged on recently:

The last British giant, EMI, has been in the hands of private equity companies for some time, and has been effectively for sale for a while now, the private investors having bought it at what now seems an obviously inflated price just as the music industry began to feel the financial impact of digitisation.

This article contains a useful update on all this.
So, will the Big Four become the Big Three?

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A little bit of theory: Chomsky's propaganda model includes as one of the five filters 'concentration of ownership, while Ben Badikian has written about the negative impact of monopoly (a topic we'll explore for the exam Media Regulation topic) in his classic book The Media Monopoly (now renamed The New Media Monopoly)

Leading corporations own the leading news media and their advertisers subsidize most of the rest. They decide what news and entertainment will be made available to the country; they have direct influence on the country's laws by making the majority of the massive campaign contributions that go to favored politicians; their lobbyists are permanent fixtures in legislatures.
This inevitably raises suspicions of overt conspiracy. But there is none. Instead, there is something more insidious: a system of shared values within contemporary American corporate culture and corporations' power to extend that culture to the American people, inappropriate as it may be. (excerpt from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Afterword_Bagdikian.html)

You can find an archive of articles at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/emi
Some recent, useful additions include:
'EMI: the sad demise of a very British company: For three decades, EMI took on the world in record sales. Now its sale to Sony and Universal marks the end for the music major'
'Universal and Sony reach deal to buy EMI for £2.5bn: Famous British music business could be split into two in agreement that hands control to biggest rivals'
'Farewell then EMI, your tunes were the background to our lives: The company that brought us Cliff and the Beatles, the Sex Pistols and Susan Boyle is disappearing. We should salute its contribution to our culture'

INDUSTRY: Big4 almost Big3 - EMI sale

The last British giant, EMI, has been in the hands of private equity companies for some time, and has been effectively for sale for a while now, the private investors having bought it at what now seems an obviously inflated price just as the music industry began to feel the financial impact of digitisation.

This article contains a useful update on all this.
So, will the Big Four become the Big Three?

-------------------------------------------------------

A little bit of theory: Chomsky's propaganda model includes as one of the five filters 'concentration of ownership, while Ben Badikian has written about the negative impact of monopoly (a topic we'll explore for the exam Media Regulation topic) in his classic book The Media Monopoly (now renamed The New Media Monopoly)

Leading corporations own the leading news media and their advertisers subsidize most of the rest. They decide what news and entertainment will be made available to the country; they have direct influence on the country's laws by making the majority of the massive campaign contributions that go to favored politicians; their lobbyists are permanent fixtures in legislatures.
This inevitably raises suspicions of overt conspiracy. But there is none. Instead, there is something more insidious: a system of shared values within contemporary American corporate culture and corporations' power to extend that culture to the American people, inappropriate as it may be. (excerpt from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Afterword_Bagdikian.html)

Rock dinosaur finally go digital

With The Beatles marking their belated permission to market their back catalogue digitally with a publicity blitz taking in The X Factor and a series of mini-vids released on YouTube (featuring clips of tracks only), the ultimate rock dinosaurs, Pink Floyd have now followed suit ... not long after winning a court case to prevent their label, EMI, allowing online consumers to cherry-pick individual tracks. They're now generously going to allow the great unwashed to download individual tracks, instead of being forced to buy entire albums. A few more 10s of £millions for the pension pots then
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/04/pink-floyd-emi-single-digital-downloads