DISTRIBUTION:Including Social Media

The term 'music industry' or 'music buisness' refers to a wide range of professions apart from that of the band/artist.

Musician/artist

Proffesionals/companies who 'support' the musician and their career path
Proffesionals/companies who sell recorded music-compositions/recordings and media

Proffesionals/companies who organise/present live events

Proffesionals/companies who broadcast/review music 

These all work in conjunction in the attempt to appeal to a LABEL:

THE FOUR MAJOR CORPORATE LABELS DOMINATING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

EMI, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment

The rest make up INDEPENDENT LABELS.
LIVE EVENTS

The biggest Live Events company is also Livenation and holds the largest venues and stand as the largest promoter. Livenation also owns Ticketmaster, a major ticket sales and online distribution company in California.

Live events are adveristised by the promoter in conjunction with the artist and the venue owner.

ROYALTIES/COPYRIGHT

There is a difference is the amount payed to the songwriter/publisher and the recording artist.
Recording artists do not recieve royalities from performance of their music on television, radio or in bars and resteraunt unless they play in a 'digital arena', as stated by the Digital Performace Rights in Sound Recordings Act of 1995.
This means that if the track/single is played on satiellite radio/webcast whereby the listener is a non-interactive (cannot choose what they hear)and subscribes to the service, the recording company will recieve royalities due to copyright laws.
As the following explains:

'Types of Rights and Royalties

Licenses and their corresponding royalties fall into four general categories:

1. Mechanical licenses and royalties - A mechanical license refers to permissions granted to mechanically reproduce music onto some type of media (e.g., cassette tape, CD, etc.) for public distribution. The music publisher grants permission for the musical composition to be reproduced. The mechanical royalty is paid to the recording artist, songwriter, and publisher based on the number of recordings sold.
2. Performance rights and royalties - A performance-rights license allows music to be performed live or broadcast. These licenses typically come in the form of a "blanket license," which gives the licensee the right to play a particular PRO's entire collection in exchange for a set fee. Licenses for use of individual recordings are also available. All-talk radio stations, for example, wouldn't have the need for a blanket license to play the PRO's entire collection. The performance royalty is paid to the songwriter and publisher when a song is performed live or on the radio.
3. Synchronization rights and royalties - A synchronization license is needed for a song to be reproduced onto a television program, film, video, commercial, radio, or even an 800 number phone message. It is called this because you are "synchronizing" the composition, as it is performed on the audio recording, to a film, TV commercial, or spoken voice-over. If a specific recorded version of a composition is used, you must also get permission from the record company in the form of a "master use" license. The synchronization royalty is paid to songwriters and publishers for use of a song used as background music for a movie, TV show, or commercial.
4. Print rights and royalties - This is a royalty paid to songwriters and publishers based on sales of printed sheet music.'

Copyright-
There are various types of copyright artists can purchase for their work. Usually as soon as the songwriter has written the song the copyright is put in place and registered at the copyright office. This means as a copyright holder, the track can be performed/displayed/remixed by no-one but you. If you hold a sound recording copyright this means the track can be performed through digital audio transmission.

Liscences-To give soemone a copyright liscence, you are permitting them to use the song.

Compulsory liscence-this is set in place once the piece has been publically broadcast, this means anyone can record/cover your song as long as you are notified and recieve the appropriate amount of royalities.

Shared Copyrights-Usually the artist gives control of the copyright to the publisher, through a transfer of copyright but they can also share the copyright and therefore neither would have exclusive right to sell the song.
 Sampled Composition is when the publisher signs over part of the copyright to another publisher in order for the other publisher to use a part of the track.


How has illegal downloading affected this?

The decrease in physical media (CDs etc) In this sense digital downloads are consumers buying a right to listen to the track rather than a physical object. Yet with the increase in illegal downloading the amount of income from CD sales has dramatically worsened the conditions in the industry.
http://openheartzoo.com/editorials/-this article also explores THE PROS AND CONS of illegal downloading, claiming that

 'In fact as the majority of artists make their money by touring and merchandise; it would seem that music piracy to some extent helps the artist gain a great deal more exposure'

this stands quite in contrast to the idea of the 'struggling artist'. Furthermore, the article pointed out that 'According to recent research undertook at both Harvard and North Carolina university, “

”While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing.”

Furthermore to add salt to the wounds of corporate scapegoaters, research has also revealed that it would take about 5,000 downloads to displace sales of just one physical CD, indicating that large-scale downloading only slightly affects the decline in album sales.

 I also agreed strongly with the comment; 'Any argument surrounding downloading as an experimental medium can furthermore be supported by a

collective rebellion towards the mediocrity of recent album releases.

 With many arguing that CDs contain way too much filler material, fans these days take the opportunity to preview the music before investing.' 

Ironically, through youtube I found the thoughts of 'pvdixon' particuarly prevelant:

What i find most important about his argument was that

'LIVE IS EVERYTHING, PERFORMANCE IS EVERYTHING..and the rest, well it was videoed, and it was on youtube' 

I find this argument most prevelant in its recognition of re-connecting with our music. A concept I feel strongly about, I feel the impact live events have on consumers are of the greatest importance, especially in such an internet/online-dominated world.

As explored by Eric Hebert the CEO of Avolor Media, this change has changed the Music distribution model significantly:

Also, I found the thoughts of Ken Lopez, Clinical Professor of Music Industry at the USC Thornton School particularly insightful for the music producers facing a time of such complex technological convergence.

Lopez recognises the importance of 'INNOVATION and ENTERPRENUERSHIP' . I also found the example of sharing new, underground bands on a platform the most gainful and insightful of distribution methods.

 How will I distribute my own media products? 

The way in which I choose to distribute my products is vital to their success. As we all know; "social media' is growing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future'

Th following statistics have been retrived from Browser Media.co.uk in '2011 Social Media Statistics show hude Growth'

' Twitter

In January 2010 Twitter had 75 million user accounts, but only 15 million used the site regularly. This resulted in 27 million Tweets per day.

Now, there are more than 175 million registered Twitter users. How many of these are regular users is unclear, but the number of Tweets per day has rocketed to 95 million – an increase of 250 percent.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has grown by an impressive 100 percent from last year, it now has over 100 million users across the globe. Interestingly, 56% of these users are from outside of the US.

Facebook

The ever-growing behemoth that is Facebook has shown some impressive growth over the last year.
Back in January 2010, the site had 350 million active users across the globe, it now has in excess of 640 million – half of which login daily. Based on this figure, Facebook has seen a 40 percent increase in daily usage over the past 12 months.
Users accessing Facebook via their mobile device has grown by over 200 percent. In early 2010 the figure was around 65 million, it now stands upwards of 200 million. This figure evidently reflects the rise in mobile and tablet usage around the globe. Interestingly, those who access Facebook via their mobile device are proven to be twice as active as those who don’t.
People are sharing more content on Facebook now too. On average, there are more than 7 billion pieces of content shared on the site weekly. This figure has risen from last year, when it was 3.5 billion.
As Facebook continues to expand on its services, expect more growth for the next 12 months.

Flickr

At the start of 2010, Flickr was hosting around 4 billion images.
Since then it has grown by around 25 percent. By December 2010, the site was hosting more than 5 billion images. This equates to it’s members uploading more than 3,000 images per minute.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the most visited and trusted websites in the world. At the turn of 2010 the site played host to over 14 million articles from over 85,000 different contributors.
Now, the site has grown to over 17 million articles from 91,000 contributors. That’s a lot of content!
Going back to the topic of showing numbers in perspective, the figures above demonstrate just that – a truly staggering rate of growth across the board.
What will the next 12 months hold? Will Facebook continue to grow at this rate? Will Google finally crack social media? Will Twitter run out of juice?  '
http://www.browsermedia.co.uk/2011/03/30/2011-social-media-statistics-show-huge-growth/

In connection to this article, I recognsie the importance of the social media in the marketing of my own media products. In particular, the rise of Facebook stands out to me as 'more than 7 billion users' who share content on a weekly basis. I feel that share my media products with users of Facebook would massively increase chances of others sharing them.

The popular blog/mag VM Virtual Music had statistics on the most visited music sites in the US, unsurprisingly, Youtube Music came out on top, as 31% or one in three of Youtube videos are music. The chart below is one from the following link and represents how youtube music visits are three times that of the others combined. In this way, I know that to increase the success of my music video, I will create my music video in fitting with Youtube requirements and begin from there to increase interest. http://virtualmusic.tv/2011/02/2010-music-website-heat-map/

Another example of Social media and its impact on the music industry is this link, -it includes a short film of a lecture concerning;

'Statistical Models of Music-listening Sessions in Social Media'

The lecturer from the department of computer science,University of Maryland, explains the impact of social media platforms in creating online music communities. She uses the example of Zune Social.

Elena Zhekva, also recognises the emphasis on genre and how platforms provide applications to find music you 'might like' in connection with the tracks you have already selected for your own playlist. This is achieved by using the LDA model which is used to look at the 'clusters' created by a users movements and searches on the site.
http://videolectures.net/www2010_zheleva_smm/

This film also explores the various channels of distribution and consumer sharing.

In respect to my own views on how artists should tackle the industry, I do beleive that live events and sharing new underground bands would make a difference to the amount the consumer will choose to spend. I will now go on to to look at the potential of live music events and how they can make a future for artists.

This view is also taken by the blogger 'open heart zoo' in their 'editorials' as

Looking further into this concept of increased exposure, it is an indisputable fact that a fan downloading music is able to experiment more now that its cost is free. Eliminating the risk involved in wasting hard-earned money, now the consumer can quite simply delete the downloaded album without spending a penny, should he or she view its content as being sub-par. In this case with finances put to the side, we can now afford to experiment and listen to genres we previously may never have considered.