EMI Records is a major record label founded in 1972 that specializes in pop and hip hop music. As the third largest record label, EMI was an early adopter of digital music trends, streaming the first digital album in 1996. Popular artists signed to EMI include Robbie Williams and Coldplay, who became the first act to sell two million digital albums worldwide. In contrast, Rough Trade is a smaller independent label founded in 1978 that focuses on punk and indie artists like The Strokes. Both labels promote their artists through music videos on YouTube and album artwork on promotional posters. While EMI distributes mainstream pop music, Rough Trade provides a platform for independent artists.

1. Major and minor record
labels research

2. Major Record Label
-

3. EMI records is founded
by the EMI company in
1972 and launched in the
year after. The company
specialises in various
genres of music such as
pop and Hip HOP.

4. EMI is owned by UMG which is a
subsidary of media conglomerate
Vivendi.

5. Ethos
Their ethos is most likely
to earn lot’s of money as
well as successfully
distributing their artists
music.

6. Popular artists from
EMI
Robbie Williams

7. EMI records is ranked third as one of the
biggest records labels for music sales.
EMI records was (and is still is) well prepared to respond
to the latest trends. In the 1990’s digital music began to
take off. EMI was well aware of this and decided to
stream their first album (Mezzanine by Massive Attack)
on the internet. This happened in 1996 and during the
same year they released a digital album download (David
Bowie’s ….hours).
In 2009 Coldplay became the first
artists to have sold two million
digital albums worldwide.

8. COLDPLAY PROMOTIONS
Cold Play VEVO has released a music video and posted on
YouTube reaching over 200,00,000 views showing how
popular and successful the song is.

9. The band promotes them selves and
their music using digipacks such as
posters. The digipaks usually link
with the
band and their
music. For
example looking
at the Mylo
Oxyloto poster
uses the same
artwork as the
album itself.
The band has
used a
different font
for their band
name which
differs
completely to
their old
albums. Reason
for this could
possibly show a
change in their

10. Gorillaz
The Gorillaz posters usually feature the
characters that are in the group. Reason could
be because they are the symbol of the Gorillaz
and they represent the band itself.

11. Minor Record Label -

12. Rough Trade is founded by
Geoff Travis in 1978.

13. Some artists from
Rough Trade

14. Ethos
Their ethos is to
distribute independent
music from independent
artists and to entertain
the audience with their
music.

15. One of the top independent record labels in Britain.
Rough Trade first started out as a music store selling
records by punk and early indie. Later rough trade
decided to became a record label. The first album
release (Stiff little fingers’ inflammable material’) from
the company sold more than 100,000 copies becoming one
of the first independent companies to have done so.
Rough trade had many
ups and downs in the past
but always manages to
survive.

16. Some Promotion posters of artists from Rough Trade.

17. The Strokes
Their music video
has been
promoted on
YouTube and
reached 2million
views.

18. Alabama Shakes
We can see that the
artworks follow a similar
theme therefore linking
to the artist.

19. EMI vs Rough Trade
The most obvious difference with the two
companies is that EMI distributes mostly
popular music and Rough Trade mostly
distributes indie or independent music. As well
as popular music EMI can also distribute
independent music like Rough Trade whereas
Rough Trade is aimed only for a niche audience.