The Integration of the Music Industry

By: David Miller

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

            Although music is encompassed by copious amounts of different genres, forms, sounds and expressional elements, it has become an industry that has been taken over by powerful multinational corporations.  These corporations have successfully re-structured the music and record label industry through economic convergence.  Within Henry Jenkins’ article “Convergence? I Diverge,” he shines light on the current economic condition of the entertainment industry by suggesting that it has been plagued by horizontal integration (Jenkins, 2001).  It is then suggested that the result of these integrations has restructured cultural production around the formulation of corporate synergies as means of generating a mass profit (Jenkins, 2001).  Horizontal integration is understood as being a common strategy used by large corporations to increase their market shares by buying out similar smaller companies.  These mergers and acquisitions of companies are done in order to increase the reach capacity of an entity (BizDharma.com).

            In specific regards to the music entertainment industry, scholars, Fenster and Swiss, suggest that major record labels were starting to get much larger through buying out smaller record companies during the 1970s.  From the early 1980’s onward, major record companies have become significantly more powerful due in part to the various independent labels that they have acquired, and thereby have been able to create internal divisions through the “genrefication” of music.  The effect that this had on the market lead to the rise of the mass commodification of popular music, as major record labels were solely interested in generating the highest profit possible.  Genrefication as well as the cross-promotion of specific artists are the tactics used by these powerful music corporations in order to market popular music to global audiences.  At this time artists and their corresponding music was no longer seen as art but rather as a potential investment.  This is increasingly through analyzing the ownership of US market shares; for only three different corporations control them.  Universal owns 40%, Sony owns 25%, Warner 15% and all other Independent labels only come out to 20% of all the production of music in the United States.

            Keith Negus then looks at how the emergence of global recording corporations has affected the music industry as a whole.  Major record labels are not as interested in new music as Independent labels are; thus an artist is more likely to become discovered through small Indy record labels.  For this reason, new audiences can be facilitated through the Indy’s promotion of new popular music; however this then has the capacity to threaten the sales of major record labels.  Due to this fear, major corporations subsequently buy out Indy labels in order to force them to lose their independence and thereby allow the same popular music to continue to resurface.  The end result is that once again the major corporations make a substantial profit.  

            I find the current trend of horizontal integration in the music industry to be abundantly depressing.  I do understand that by saturating the market with music that is dictated from a small amount of corporations, a mass profit has to be guaranteed.  This increasingly evident greed that these few corporations are guilty of has taken so much of the creativity within music out of reach; for audiences are only made aware of a vastly small segment of genres and musical style.