After the trial, the anti-payola statute was passed under which payola became a misdemeanor, penalty by up to $10,000 in fines and one year in prison. Getting radio play would allow the songs to reach its expected audience and help launch the artist’s career. This practice also helped small and independent labels break the stronghold of the music industry by major labels. To better understand what was behind the Payola scandal in the 1950’s, let me discuss a little history about the radio industry. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) thrived on the sales of sheet music and recordings of Tin Pan Alley songs, the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the U.S. at the time, but the creation of radio in the 1940’s was geared toward recorded music and things started to change in the industry.
Their producer, George Martin helped Brian Espstein push this group, dubbed the “Fab Four” toward international stardom by 1964. The Beetles were the first of the British Invasion of rock artists to the USA, and to date, the biggest sellers of British pop music. They toured for 3 years, and are thought to be the globe’s biggest influence on pop-rock music. They were also the most lucrative performers of all time. The Beetle-mania sensation lead the record sales up the charts, with over a billion sold in the UK, and today, have sold 177 million more records in the USA than any other
However mobile segment was fast emerging as a big substitute of MP3 players. As a result Apple faced very stiff competition from these rivals. Though Apple responded well with launch of iPhone and Lala.com (music streaming site), yet the threat of other substitutes is pretty high and Apple will find it difficult to have a sustainable position in MP3 players. Complements:- The launch of iTunes Desktop software and iTunes Music Store was very instrumental in helping the growth of iPod. The sales of iPod shot up by 6 times after the launch of iTunes store.
Along with the iTunes music stores the iPod revolutionized the way individuals would buy music. In 2007 another Apple product was introduced that would revolutionize its industry, the iPhone. Apple is now the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. Case Questions 1. How has Apple implemented the marketing concept?
Music was changing in the sixties decade, in the fifties it was all about rock’n’roll, this changed when pop music and acid rock became popular. The music of the this decade promoted dropping out of society, doing drugs, and helped popularize the word “hip” (Miller 222). The Beatles were one of the most influential bands of their time and changed the way people listened to music forever (Miller 222). During the sixties teens were swept up by the Beatlemania. Another thing teens were crazy about were music festivals.
Viral ads, which are also known as guerrilla marketing more often nowadays, are the newest way to get media messages out to the public through the spread on the internet. Many of these are over the top and very innovative. Music is used widely here to make their messages memorable and to keep audience members entertained and intrigues as these messages are fairly longer than normal TV advertisement spots. “The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along,” (http://fasttrack2business.com/). One popular viral ad that can be looked at for this discussion would be for the new Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper.
It was in this time that Apple moved into the digital music space as a provider and distributor of music content. This came as a signal to the end of the previous innovation, the CD which was largely used to save music. Apple came up with a new technology and created iTunes as an online service where people could download legal, high quality songs for a very reasonable price. With the advent of this technology (iTunes) and the ease with which music was available digitally for download, the trend toward digital music was clear. This trend slowly opened up the fast growing demand for MP3 players that played mobile digital music, such as Apple’s iPod.
The summer of 1967 was called the “summer of love” and inspired the hippie movement that unified many of these like-minded revolutionaries under the encouragement of music. The Beatle’s album Sgt. Pepper’s was released in the beginning of June by the Apple corporation and became number one on the U.K. charts, selling millions. This album had a huge influence on this movement, blowing all expectations out of the water. Their new sound truly changed the way people perceived music and the world around them.
Online distribution of music accounts for 80% of the industry revenue, which is estimated to be an industry whole of $5.34 billion by 2012 fall (Demery 2008). The introduction of online music distribution has revolutionised the music industry and digital revenues have rose to £166 million. A more threatening side of music downloads has been the emergence of file sharing and piracy that has recently arisen, which is freely accessible to download without payment required. The international federation of phonographic industry states 95% of all music downloads are sourced unlawfully (Rogers, 2009). Regrettably, MP3 files are not secure and once someone has acquired a file nothing stops them from making other copies from it.
Now hip artist, their music and their clothing lines are known world wide. This notoriety has helped to pump millions of dollars into the economy. Research has shown that Hip Hop has a major impact on the economy. Many major corporations who once shunned the idea of hip hop as a mainstream music genre have now jumped on the band wagon and have embraced the idea of using hip hop artists and their music in their advertisements as a way to draw in money from those loyal followers. Hip Hop music and its culture has crossed cultural, racial, geographical, and religious lines around the world.