Record Labels

Record companies are the main investors in, and developers of, musical talent in the UK and globally. Around 23% of label revenue is poured back into the signing and developing of new talent through their A&R (artist and repertoire) departments. Record labels enable artists, through advances and marketing/sales support, to treat music making as a full-time career. They exploit the artists’ recordings commercially and collect and pay the resulting royalties on their behalf.


Labels traditionally pay for the recording and mixing of albums (with this money being recouped through the sale and wider exploitation of those recordings) and they often underwrite new acts’ touring costs to help raise their profile and sales. On top of manufacturing and distributing the recordings which is both physical and digital retailers, record labels provide an essential promotional and marketing role. This includes developing and executing ad and marketing campaigns as well as promoting the acts to media.

Labels can also seek out other ways for the recordings to be exploited, such as being used in movies and adverts, and license rights to global parties in different markets. In recent years, a number of labels have moved beyond the sole acquisition and exploitation of the rights associated with sound recordings to take an interest in artists other sources of income.

Goodwins Theory

Goodwin’s theory is based on eight main principles:

·         Links between the Lyrics and Visuals

·         Links between music and visuals

·         Genre characteristics

·         Intertextual references

·         Objectification of women

·         Voyeurism  (Direct gaze, insight to the singers life)

·         Demands of the record label

·         Performance based ,Narrative and Concept.

Links between Lyrics and Visuals

Goodwin suggests lyrics will make a constant reference to the visuals on the screen. The visuals reinforce the lyrics.

Genre characteristics

These are depicted as the certain traits associated with a particular music genre. Different genres have various characteristics such as rock music videos mainly have the band on stage performing. Pop videos are more performance based dancing and a positive atmosphere. Then you have R&B music videos which generally include sexy women parading around half naked and men singing or women and mainly rapping will be involved in this type of music video.

Notions of looking

Notions of looking plays on the idea of gaze and the way someone in particular is seen. For example, in a lot of music video’s women are often presented according to Goodwin as objects. Notions of looking however is not just restricted to women, it may also represent men in a particular way such as controlling or violent as cheats.

Demands of the Record Label

The record label has a certain control over the artist they sign. It is ultimately up to the record label to decide what the artist should be represented as. For example, for women the label may require the artist to come off as sexy in order to appeal to men and reach that target audience. For men the same thought process could be applied, being represented as sexy would reach out to the target audience of women. This is crucial as particular genders are more inclined to listen to certain genres of music. E.g. women who are interested in urban music are more likely to listen to R&B. So men appealing as sexy would draw in women audiences

The Music Industry

The music industry involves the production, distribution, and sale of music in a variety of forms as well as the promotion of live musical performance. People arguably have bought, sold, and bartered music for as long as it has been made. Street singers, roving minstrels, broadside sellers, and traveling music teachers developed makeshift grassroots music industries that differed more in scale than in kind when compared to the modern music business.

Beginning in the early 1880s, publishing firms became concentrated around Manhattan's 28th Street, dubbed Tin Pan Alley by the newspaper writer and songwriter Monroe H. Rosenfeld. The city's publishers perfected the mass production and distribution of songs. Usually paying staff or freelance composers a flat rate per song, Tin Pan Alley firms issued thousands of titles in the hope that a few would hit with the nation's public. Publishers courted popular vaudeville singers, often paying them handsomely to include a song of choice in their act.

 Yet by the 1890s, "nickel-in-the-slot" talking machines graced urban arcades, introducing the nation to the novelty of mechanically reproduced music. A few companies controlled the patents to competing phonograph technologies. Edison controlled his wax cylinder playback technology. He licensed it to the fledgling Columbia Phonograph Company and the two introduced the first talking machines designed for home use in 1896. By this time, the competing gramophone disk machines and records made by Emile Berliner were already liberally distributed

These firms raced to establish their technology as the consumer standard throughout the United States and the world. Victor eventually won the technology wars by focusing on the home consumer trade, creating celebrity recording artists such as the opera singer Enrico Caruso, and expanding internationally. In 1901, Victor and licensee Gramophone divided the globe into distinct markets and established distribution networks, retail outlets, and recording operations from China to Latin America. Other companies quickly followed suit.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, the music industry was characterized by a wave of corporate mergers and transnational expansion. In 1994, 90% of worldwide gross music sales accrued to six multinational corporations. The century ended much as it had begun, even as the industry giants grappled with the copyright repercussions of the digital revolution.