The big 4 are the four major dominating record labels. The chart to the left of the page shows how the big four have dominated over 80% of the music industry combined, with only 18.13% of artists being signed to independent labels. As you can see the big four record label have a massive influence on the music industry and dominate the majority of them.
Sometimes, even though artists have produced an independent record they eventually they have gone into signing a label with one of the big four which is shown in an example below (Jake Miller)
EMI Group
EMI Group Limited, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, was a British multinational music recording and publishing company, and electronics device and systems manufacturing company. it was the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and was one of the big four record companies.
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group (WMG), also known as Warner Music, is an American major global record company.The largest American-owned music conglomerate worldwide, it is one of the 'big three' recording companies. The company operates some of the largest and most successful recording labels in the world, which is one of the reasons in which they are well known.
Independent Labels
An independent record label or indie record label is a record label that operates without the funding of or outside major record labels.Many bands and musical acts begin their careers on independent labels. The positive thing about this is that it shows that an artist have the independence of being their own person and not needing big labels to sign them because they are already doing well on their own. Even though they will eventually sign a label, the important thing is to become as big as they can first before signing away.
Sony BMG
Sony BMG Music Entertainment was a record music company, which was a 50–50 joint venture between the Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann AG. It premiers record labels representing music from a wide range of different genres. The reason they do this is so they are fair and so they have an experience of working with a wide range of different people which create a wide range of different types of music.
Universal Music Group
an American worldwide music corporation that operates as a subsidiary of Paris-based French media conglomerate Vivendi, It claims to be the largest music corporation in the world.
The two album covers above are from the same rapper who was not signed with any label and self-released the album with out a lot of help and therefore this got him signed with one of the big four labels which was the Warner Music Group. The reason this being is that he wanted to make a name for himself before he signed, so to do this he created all of his pages and got as much as a could before it was time to sign away and become bigger. However he still has control of all of his accounts and still contacts his audience directly.
Change in distribution (itunes and streaming)
Since the digital revolution there has been a massive change in distribution across all of the different platforms. These platforms being Broadcast, E-media and Print. For example most days now people would been just uploading their music online for people to stream for the song to become more popular. Where as before people would have to get their music out there any way possible and they done this through print for example which would be them being in magazines trying to promote it. They would also appear on the air which could be like the radio talking about their album and making people aware that way.
But thanks to E-Media artists can now just get their music out there a lot easier and it is free to upload their songs onto the internet, where as before they had to try and get shops to sell their albums and therefore the process was a lot longer.
Change in marketing (social media)
It is a lot easier to be seen now through the social media, for example a big one is youtube and Facebook. This makes it easier for marketing because the artist can be seen a lot easier through the audience, this can be them liking and sharing the artists content and therefore the artist does not have to do as much because their audience is helping them out.
The biggest example of this is Cadbury's gorilla advert in which shows a gorilla playing the drums. This advert helped cadbury quite a lot in the market because they paid quite a small amount to make it, but because the audience loved it so much people were advertising it for them and cadbury therefore did not have to pay anything because their audience done it for them.
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