The Big Four record companies - Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Group - collectively control around 70% of the global recorded music industry. They engage in "vertical integration", handling the production, distribution, and consumption of music themselves. This gives them significant power and influence over how music is made and distributed. Each owns a network of smaller record labels that serve different music markets and genres.

1. The Big Four

2. • The ‘Big Four’ make up about 70% of the worldwide music industry; the other
30% is made of other independent labels.
• All four of these music companies own the production, distribution and
consumption of their music, this is known as ‘vertical integration’.
• Production – recording music.
• Distribution – promoting music and getting it into shops,
on the radio and downloaded for
payment.
• Consumption – people buying CD’s, downloading
music, paying for live concert
tickets and purchasing related
products.
• Because EMI, Song, Warner Music Group and
Universal do all these stages themselves they
are very powerful within the music industry and
have a lot of influence over the way music is
made and sold nowadays.
• Each of these companies consists of many smaller
music labels which serve different markets.

3. - Background Information
• Fourth largest of the Big Four.
• Headquarters - London, UK. However they are able to serve artists, consumers and
partners all over the world.
• Founded in 1931 by Emile Berliner (the inventor of the gramophone)
• Revenue = £1.072 billion (2009)
• Employees = 5,500 (January 2008)
• EMI Music’s first websites went live in 1993 and 1994 and in 1998 EMI streamed
the first complete album over the internet, ‘Mezzanine’ by Massive Attack.
• The following year EMI was the first company to release a digital album download,
David Bowie’s ‘…Hours’. EMI also launched the first internet video single in 2001. In
2007 EMI was the first major music company to make its music available without
digital rights management (DRM) software.
• On 12 November 2011, it was announced that EMI has sold its recorded music
operations to Universal Music Group for £1.2 billion ($1.9billion) and its music
publishing operations to a Sony-led consortium for $2.2 billion. Among the other
companies that had competed for the recorded music business was Warner Music
Group which was reported to have made a $2 billion bid.

4. - Artists
Below is a list of some of the artists signed with EMI...
• You Me At Six • Peter Doherty
• Priscilla Ahn • Nickelback
• 30 Seconds to Mars • Kylie Minogue
• Pink Floyd • KT Tunstall
• The Beatles • The Kooks
• Lily Allen • Gorillaz
• Katy Perry • Evanescene
• David Guetta • Eliza Doolittle
• Blur • Empire of the Sun

5. - Record Labels
Below is a list of some of EMI’s record labels...
• Angel • EMI CMG
• Astralwerks • EMI Records
• Blue Note • EMI Records Nashville
• Capitol • Manhattan
• Capitol Latin • Parlophone
• Capitol Records Nashville • Virgin Classics
• EMI Classics • Virgin Records

6. • Third largest of the Big Four.
• Headquarters - New York, USA.
• Founded as Warner Brothers Records in 1958, then became Warner Music
Group in 2004.
• Offers artist management, merchandising, touring, fan clubs, VIP ticketing,
sponsorships and brand endorsements, and numerous third-party
solutions that facilitate the sale of music-based content directly to
consumers.
• Record Labels include – Asylum, Atlanitc, Cordless, East West, Nonesuch,
Rhino, Sire, Warner Bros. And Word.
• Artists include – Areosmith, The Kinks, The Prodigy, My Chemical
Romance, Cee Lo Green, Paramore, Bruno Mars, Jason Mraz.
• Out of all the major record companies it is the 3rd largest with a net
income of $56billion (2008).

7. • The largest of the Big Four.
• Headquarters - California, USA. However it also has headquarters in New York,
London, Florida, Tennessee and France.
• Founded in 1934 as ‘Decca Records USA’ and then in 1996 it become UMG.
• They discover and develop artists and then market and promote their music
across a wide range of formats and platforms.
• Their publishing company also discovers and develops songwriters and owns
and administers copyrights to musical compositions for use in recordings,
performances, films and adverts.
• Their merchandising company, Bravado, sells artist/music related products
through not only the internet but also live performances and fashion retail.
• Record labels include – ECM, Decca, Universal Music Latino, Disa, Emarcy,
Mercury Records, Verve Music Group and Universal Music Group Nashville.
• Artists include – All Time Low, Lady Gaga, U2, The All-American Rejects, Justin
Bieber, Jackson 5 and Two Door Cinema Club.

8. • Second largest of the Big Four.
• Headquarters - New York, USA.
• Founded in 1929 as ‘American Record Corporation (ARC)’ and then in
2008 became Sony Music Entertainment.
• SME is a major conglomerate company; this means that it is a large
corporation formed by the merging of separate and diverse firms.
• As of 2008 Sony had a revenue of $5,672million.
• Along with creating music, Sony also makes devices such as mp3 players
and headphones which consumers can buy and use.
• Record labels include –Epic Records, Sony Music Nashville, Sony
Masterworks, Columbia Records UK, Syco Music, Legacy Recordings, JG3
Records and Verity Gospel Music Groups.
• Artists include – Olly Murs, Rebecca Ferguson, Avril Lavigne, One
Direction, Beyonce, Michael Jackson, Oasis, Chris Brown, Foo Fighters and
Boys Like Girls.

9. Napster was developed by John Fanning and Shawn Fanning and was initially released in 1999. It was originally
founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files,
typically music, encoded in MP3 format. Its technology allowed people to easily share their MP3 files with
other participants. Its easy access and use led to massive copyright violations of music and film media, as
well as other intellectual property. This meant that Napster had to stop operations and it was eventually
taken over by Roxio.
The music industry made the following claims against Napster:
1. That its users were directly infringing the plaintiffs' copyrights.
2. That Napster was liable for contributory infringement of the plaintiffs' copyrights.
3. That Napster was liable for vicarious infringement of the plaintiffs' copyrights.
Napster lost the case in the District Court and appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Although the Ninth Circuit found that Napster was capable of commercially significant non-infringing uses,
it affirmed the District Court's decision. On remand, the District Court ordered Napster to monitor the
activities of its network and to block access to infringing material when notified of that material's location.
Napster was unable to do this, and so shut down its service in July 2001. Napster finally declared itself
bankrupt in 2002 and sold its assets. It had already been offline since the previous year owing to the effect
of the court rulings. In its second incarnation Napster became an online music store until it merged with
Rhapsody on 1 December 2011.
Napster was seen as very ‘user-friendly’ and made it relatively easy for music enthusiasts to download copies
of not only popular songs, but also songs that were otherwise difficult to obtain, like older songs,
unreleased recordings, and songs from concert bootleg recordings. At its peak there were 25 million users
and 80 million songs, and the system never once crashed.

10. Founded in 2006 Spotify is a Swedish DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music
from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and
Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish start-up Spotify AB, the service had approximately 10
million users as of 15 September 2010; about 2.5 million of who were paying members. The service is, as
of November 2011, available in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, the
Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the Unites States. In March
2011 Spotify announced that it has one million paying subscribers across Europe. In September the
number of paying subscribers doubled to two million, or at least €10 million per month of revenue.
An active Facebook account is required to use Spotify, unless the user has registered for a Spotify-only account
before 22 September 2011. A 6 month free trial period is activated upon initial login with a Facebook
account, where a user can listen to an unlimited amount of music supported by visual and radio style
advertising. After the trial, Spotify will make tracks unavailable once they are played 5 times and has a
listening limit of ten hours per month. An "Unlimited" subscription removes advertisements and time
limits and a "Premium" subscription introduces extra features such as higher bit rate streaming, offline
access to music and mobile app access.
As of July 2011 the catalogue provides access to approximately 15 million songs via searching for artists,
albums, titles, labels and genres, and gives users access to tracks from many major and independent
labels. Some artists have opted not to be added to Spotify. Additionally, some artists are missing in certain
regions due to licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels. For example, The Beatles are not
available because of a digital distribution agreement that is exclusive to iTunes.