Discuss the issues raised by increasing globalisation of media institutions and their ability to target national (expecially British) audiences.

Discuss the issues raised by increasing globalisation of media institutions and their ability to target national (expecially British) audiences.

Increasing globalistation has lead to multinational record labels like UMG being able to reach a mass market, including Britain. 


To enhance the wide market that UMG attract, they use subsidiaries like Island Records, which seperate the audiences and allows their artists to become more focussed on their set target audience. Smaller labels however don't have this ability to create subsidiaries to make them more global, so labels like Domino usually just focus on the location which they are based, in Domino's case, Britain.

Artists signed to Domino are then at a disadvantage to artists at UMG as they don't their record label doesn't have as many global connections, so limit the amount of growth the artists can do.  Because of their smaller size, it usually means that a smaller label like Domino have fewer connections with large global conglomerates, for example film and tv producers, where music from artists on their label could be used synergisticly to promote their music. Whereas UMG do have these connections, as they are already part of a conglomerate, they have easy access to other parts of the company where synergy is used effectively.


However, an artist signed to a larger label like UMG, may find that their label are not targeting a specific enough audience, or that they're not focusing enough on the location of the audience in which they feel their music would be most appreciated. This could damage the artist's sales and audience loyalty as some audiences could begin to feel slightly neglected from the artist if they're too busy focusing elsewhere in the world. 

Results Of Audience Survey

To gain a good variety of response to my survey, I advertised it on Facebook and recieved research from 21 different people, aged between 12 - 50. This ranges from younger siblings who are 12, to people my age, 16/17, to cousins around 20-30, to parents from 40-50. I thought that this would be the best way to recieve research, as the music industry plays a big part in the lives of a mass market of people, and that all of these different people's opinions matter.

The results to the question above shocked me quite a lot, as I thought the number of people that illegal download would be a lot higher than those who buy the CD or legally download music. This proves that people are still buying music, as over half of them stated so. However it isn't a much more than the amount of people who illegally download, meaning that ofcourse it is still and issue, and that the industry is losing out on a lot of potential money.

These results however didn't suprise me, as I thought that most people aren't too bothered about how they get hold of the music, as long as they get it then they are happy. It shows the real split between peoples opinions about music, and this could portray that people don't really consider the effect of the way they get hold of music.

Radio is quite a dominant way that people find new artists, and I believe this, as the radio usually have a variety of new songs as it's part of their job to promote them. The rest of the results follow what I expected, as I thought the internet and TV would come above friends as people seem to be more influenced by what they see and here social networking or on TV, rather than having discussions with friends, in most cases anyway.

The results to this question are also what I expected, as the record labels don't have much of a connection to the customer of the music, as the customer will buy/download the music if they like it, and not because of what record label they're signed to.

I'm glad that these results didn't come out that people didn't base their opinions on the appearance of music artists, but cared more about the music. I think basing your thoughts upon an artists' single is a good thing, as this is where you get your first impressions of the artist from. However I also think that it's good to look into other area's of the artist like live shows and their album, before becoming fully absorbed into the artist.