4 Areas of the Music Industry
Live Performance
Live performances are where you can really make your mark as a musician, Since being a musician has a lot to do with social networking, its good for a band to meet other musicians and listen to them perform live as well as creating their own popular fan base.
When a band has their own fan base, this can boost their reputation up a lot because that way, the band knows what their target audience is and then they can make music that the audience will enjoy and its much easier when the band creates their fan base from people in their local area because that way, fans in the area can spread the news about this band to others. For example, the band Little Comets are from Newcastle so they started their fan base in Newcastle.
A big part of live performances for a band would be for someone to video their performance and put it on a social networking like Facebook, Twitter or Youtube, because for example if someone was to ask about a band performing somewhere, they could then search for one of the live performances on Youtube and find it.
'Gig Swaps' are another example of building a big fan base, for example, two bands could play a gig at each others hometown and gain more fans.
Record Companies
Record companies are the investors and developers of musical talent all over the world,
Record companies play a big role to help artists promote their music, for example, creating promotional ads and marketing campaigns to help get the artist's new music out there (e.g. putting an advert on a social networking site like Facebook or Youtube since almost everyone is using one of those sites.
One of the biggest pros of being signed to a record company is the money, record companies normally pay for the albums to be recorded and when the company that the artist is signed to has a lot of money, they can spend a lot of money promoting the artists music and what they would want for their career.
Another pro would be connections, again, if the company has a lot of money and have a big reputation, they're going to have some strong connections with some famous producers or promoters so the artist can their music out there a lot quicker.
Probably the biggest con would be that a lot of artists get signed to large record companies so a lot of their gets thrown out, the reason it would be really bad for the artist is that they would almost be fighting for attetion from the company, and sooner or later the artist's music and popularity would probably fade away..
Music Publishing
The business of music publishing is concerned with developing, protecting and valuing music.
Music publishers play a big role in the development of new music and they take care of the business side of all of it, and then this gives the artists and songwriters space to concentrate on their own music.
Music publishing jobs can vary in a number of categories, the majority of them require musical knowledge.
Artist Management
An artist manager, also known as a "band manager", is in charge of the business side of being in a band.
The artist manager plays a big role because, even though the band members might be very good at writing lyrics, and being creative in the song, they aren't very good at promoting themselves and booking their own gigs, so that's where the artist manager comes in, their job is more or less to do what the band members can't do, which is to promote them and build their reputation by booking their gigs.
But if there is a band that's just starting out, then it wouldn't be a very good idea to treat them like they've getting gigs all the time and like they are used to that lifestyle, it would be best to start them out slowly and then build them up.
Bibliography:
http://bpi.co.uk/category/music-business.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/introducing/advice/
http://musicians.about.com/od/beingamusician/a/majorlabelpandc.htm
http://musicians.about.com/od/otherindustrycareers/p/artistmanager.htm
