1. The music industry in the digital world
Over the years the music industry has changed dramatically and come a long way from people
buying records to play on their record players, cassettes for their cars, radio channels playing
popular music for specific target audiences, music channels on T.V and now purchasing and watching
music and music videos online. All of this has been to keep up with the ever changing way we listen
to music and watch music videos.
MTV was first launched on the 1st
August 1981 as an American based music channel to show their
target audience of young adults the latest music videos to their favourite songs. The first music video
shown on MTV was The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" and the employees would have to put
a new tape in the VCR every time they wanted to play another music video leaving the screen to
black for a few seconds before the next video cold be played.
From 1981-1983 people began to call for more ‘black’ artist music videos to be shown on MTVs
music channel. This was met with criticism from the producers of MTV stating that this did not fit in
with their target audience. However after much criticism from viewers and stars such as David Bowie
MTV aired the music video to Michael Jacksons ‘Billie Jean’ which went straight to number one in
the charts and proved a success.
However in 2011 MTV saw a fall in the number of viewers watching music videos. It seemed that
people just didn’t want to watch videos on T.V as often and had maybe moved on from the style of
MTV as many other music channels had crept up over the years gaining popularity such as ‘Vevo’.
In 2014 MTV has come a very long way. At the moment a lot of MTV’s time is spent screening
programs such as Teen Mom, My Sweet 16 and reality dramas such as The Valleys. It seems their
target audience had waned and seemed to have wanted more than just music videos.
The music channel ‘Vevo’ however has become extremely successful as they have taken to the
internet withtheir own YouTube channel showing thousands of good quality music videos. They have
bee bale to recognise their target audience of young adults shift from watching music videos on T.V
to viewing them on the internet through other platforms such as mart phones, iPhone, tablets. IPads
and laptops making them ever more successful and looking like they will be able to retain their
target audience in the future as more young adults look for entertainment online rather than
through T.V.
The music industry mostly promote online with adverts for new music videos appearing on social
networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter which their target audience of young adults use.
Their marketing technique has also changed dramatically and is mainly I believe through word of
mouth. By advertising a new music video on Twitter of Facebook people will instantly start to tweet
and create a social status about the new video or song creating interest therefore people will want
to watch the music video and a majority of people will go online to YouTube, type in the song name
and click on the first link which is usually Vevo’s YouTube channel. They are then able to share the
video online on their social networking sites so more people ending hearing about and watching the
video. They basically have just got themselves free advertising through the internet.
I believe that the way the music industry now shows its music video is mostly through the internet.
They have realised that their target audience are now using the internet much more than previous
generations and need to keep with the times to be able to screen their music videos to their
audience. Some channels do better than others such as Vevo over others like MTV but either way
there main target is to entertain their audience and keep as many loyal to them as possible and in
this day and age the only way to do this s to move online.