Post 1: The UK music industry

Sony music group is the second largest of the "big 3" leading labels in the music industry, ahead of Warner music group and only second to Universal Music Group (UMG).

The "Big 3" labels

Headquartered in New York City, the Sony Corp. owned label signs major artists such as Michael Jackson, Khalid and Travis Scott, showing their reach both past and present. The label typically signs artists through their many subsidiaries such as Columbia Records, RCA Records, Epic Records and Arista records.

The large range of artists signed to Sony Music, spanning all different genres

12 of the main Sony Music subsidiaries

These labels provide these artists with resources which boost their career in various ways eg helping to market them further, helping with merchandising and improving their PR as well as often giving artists a large sum of money for the initial signing. This is all at the cost of taking a percentage of the artist's money from sales, touring and merchandise as well as often locking artists into the deal until they deliver a certain number of albums and singles. Major labels also typically control when music can drop in order to maximize sales, which can often be frustrating for artists and fans who want to put out/ listen to new music.

My knowledge of the music industry helped me decide on the content I would be putting on my website as it allowed me to see the importance of making promotional content and the type of corporate influence in these videos. In this sense, I made sure that my website would contain many ways for the audience to buy things, whether that was buying merchandise, tickets, albums or using a discount code on another site (which would give the artist/label money). The main reason labels sign artists is to make money and so I feel my website, alongside the collaborations my artist had with other Sony Music signed artists through social media, were ways my content was influenced by the industry side of the project.

Khalid's website contains various ways to buy into the artist as shown by the options on the top bar