Major and minor record labels research

Major Record Label -

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.

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

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

Ethos

Popular artists from EMI

Robbie Williams

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 firstartists to have sold two million digital albums worldwide.

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.

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 music style.

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.

Minor Record Label -

Rough Trade is founded by Geoff Travis in 1978.

Some artists from Rough Trade

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

Ethos

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.

Some Promotion posters of artists from Rough Trade.

The Strokes

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

Alabama ShakesWe can see that the artworks follow a similar theme therefore linking to the artist.

EMI vs Rough TradeThe 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.