Introduction
The problem which our company found with Sony’s music entertainment division was their lack of focus on digital distribution. That is, most consumers do not know the artists or content which Sony Music Entertainment has to offer. Also, if consumers were aware of the content which Sony has made available, most consumers would download it illegally rather than pay for it because they feel that the price is too high. The trend of digitally available content is an essential adaptation for an industry giant such as Sony due to the fast paced “on-demand” society in which we currently live. If Sony could find a way to make its consumers more available of their content and provide it as a reasonable price, the Entertainment conglomerate could prove beneficial by generating large amounts of revenue. This information was determined by first researching the background of the company as a whole and then gathering data via consumer interviews.
Secondary Research
Our first step in uncovering the problem which Sony must focus on was to gain background information on Sony Music Entertainment and the current music industry as a whole. Through a search of current events and press releases we discovered that one of Sony Music Entertainment’s main goals is to “transform its business to include significant and growing digital sales”, as stated in the most current financial report (Sony Corporation, 2009). We found this problem important to Sony as the company does focus large efforts on being at the forefront of technology and being viewed as an innovator. If Sony were to fall behind on the emerging industry trend of digital distribution, their foothold as an entertainment industry giant and innovator may be jeopardized.
Using this a...
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...nd fresh music that will result in higher volume downloads” (Nate Perks, personal communication, March 7, 2010).
Conclusion
Now that we have conducted our research, we can conclude that there is a problem with Sony and their efforts towards digital distribution. More specifically, most consumers do not even know which artists or groups are signed to the Sony label. This limits the availability for Sony to capitalize on its content since most people don’t know what the label has to offer. Furthermore, if consumers were to know which artists Sony has available, opportunities to capitalize on them are limited due to the high rate of piracy brought on by what the consumers consider too high of a cost. From here, we must proceed to find a solution to these problems, we must find ways to get the Sony Music Entertainment brand known and purchased by the mass consumer base.
We have all watched over the last year and a half as the controversy over the digital music provider Napster has clogged our television screens and lined our floors in the forms of newspaper articles. We are also well aware of the implications and revenue losses that the service either directly or indirectly causes. What I am going to investigate more in-depth in this article is, more specifically, the effect that Napster has on the operations of record stores worldwide. I am going to try to describe the most profound effects that Napster has on this industry.
Sisario, Ben, and Zoe Keating. "As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle." Business Day Media & Advertising. N.p., 28 Jan. 2013. Web. 15 Feb. 2014. .
Earlier this year (DATE???) alt-rockers Cake topped the Billboard 200 chart with their first album in seven (???) years, Showroom of Compassion. The album sold 44,000 copies the first week of its release, a record low for the number one hit. At the same time, Britney Spears' single “Hold It Against Me” scaled the digital song chart with 411,000 copies sold. The two charts illustrate the change in the way we listen to music. The Internet—as it did for almost everything—has radically affected the way people get music.
It is not unusual to find hostile response of audio-visual industry against a new copying technology. Every time when a new copying technology was invented and introduced into the market, the industry responded argued that the new technology would cause significant damage to them by promoting piracy; It was true with the cases of Xerox, audio tape recorder, video tape recorder, compact disc (CD), and finally with the online file sharing through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) service. Usually, introduction of new copying technology led to series of legal disputes just like what we are witnessing in the current case of the Record Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) lawsuits against KaZaA and its individual members. Quite contrary to the industry’s usual arguments, however, new technologies eventually have proved additional revenues of profit for them so far. (Bettig, 1996)
Pfanner, Eric. "Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit." Business Day Technology. The Nre York Times, 26 Feb 2013. Web. 21 Mar 2014.
Sony Music should have been better engaged to allow this division’s management to properly voice their concerns over the piracy of their content. If there had been a taskforce, as mentioned above, developers for the two music devices could have worked with Sony Music to adjust their products to meet the piracy concerns. Maybe then either team could have produced a product that not only did not have sizeable technical drawbacks, but was innovative enough to capture the attention of the marketplace.
Spotify’s Time. (n.d.). Music Business Journal Berklee College of Music RSS. Retrieved May 21, 2014, from http://www.thembj.org/2014/05/spotifys-time/
An “analyst” was quoted in the case (in 2002) as saying that “people will pay for music on the Internet, eventually.” This person was skeptical of the willingness of consumers to pay for
Two new managers have been appointed at Sony in the last 15 years due to a number of developing problems, including the innovation ‘cogs’ within Sony slowing down, being forced into an aggressive pricing strategy, increased competition, losing the battle of VHS and Betamax, profit and sales remaining flat and the ongoing poor performance of Sony films (Mintzberg et al, 2003). Both managers initiated major strategic changes with varying degrees of success; firstly Nobuyuki Idei was appointed and initiated a major shift from analogue to digital technology, as there was a belief that Sony was falling behind the market in this respect. Idei also targeted the top position in the audio and visual industry, a universal standard in home computer devices and a new distribution infrastructure. He believed his job was the ‘regeneration of the entrepreneurial spirit’ (Mintzberg et al, 2003), believing it had been lost.
The music industry is an ever-evolving revolutionary entertainment industry for the masses. Music provides entertainment to all different masses due to the variety of genres produced. Music is a very profitable and complex industry. Music has expanded to a worldwide industry for musical artist to express their art through the form of song to the masses. Music not only appeals to the ears but to every aspect of a person. Music allows for individuals to explore and let their imagination expand as they here a song. Throughout the years the industry has undergone dramatic changes. Whether it is genres, forms of how it is distributed, or even the impact the artist have had. The industry is diverse and ever changing as the years continue. In the past 20 years the industry has changed with help of the technological breakthroughs and adoptions.
Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html Kot, G. (2009). Ripped: How the wired generation revolutionized music. New York: Scribner Books, Inc. Prices for pro equipment. n.d. - n.d. - n.d.
There are six key new market disruptions concerning the digital distribution of music: the creation of a new and broad customer base, the possibility of an annuity versus a per-unit revenue model, the gatekeeper advantage for a record company having proprietary access to a new digital distribution infrastructure, understanding of a technology that could be applied to other digital content, need for balance between physical and digital distribution strategies, the strategy the incumbent should adopt with respect to the evolving war over digital distribution standards. Was there a disruption or an evolution?
...en the biggest hurdles the music industry has overcome. Thanks to iTunes and Google Music record labels and artist can reach almost anyone in the world with their music and know that their work won’t be infringed upon. In the next five years copyrights will still have the respect it has today. As technology moves along copyrights will be right behind it revising the rules and regulations to make sure that an artist intellectual property is safe and that the artist or label can receive compensatory damages for copyright infringement.
Universal Music Group (UMG), an American-French global music corporation is one of the world 's’ top three major record labels. It has about 28 percent of the total US album market share and earns yearly revenues of $1.5 billion dollars. The label has one of the most impressive catalogs globally which include superstars such as Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Avicii, Kanye West and Bon Jovi. Universal, like all the other major labels, has sub-labels. Def Jam Recordings and Island Records are a couple examples of the many labels that exist under UMG.
The music industry started in the mid 18th century with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through the decades there has been a great increase in this industry; however, the revenues for this industry have declined by half in the last 10 years. This has been caused by music piracy, which “is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent” . After 1980’s, when the Internet was released to public, people started to develop programs and websites in which they could share music, videos, and information with...