RESEARCHING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

By Harry Leggatt

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SECTORS

There are over 3 sectors of the music industry, all focusing on a different part of music as a business.

Three Examples• Recording/Writing• Record Labels/Publishing• Management

MUSIC INDUSTRY PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Music can be sold in a few physical/non physical formats such as• CD’s• Cassettes• Vinyl LP’s• Mp3’s

Artists can choose to sell products for their fans other than their own music through merchandise• Shirts• Posters

Musicians can also sell their written music as compositions to other musicians to perform. This mainly happens in pop music.

INDUSTRY BODIES

In Australia and like most other countries with a music industry, there are companies that take care of things in certain sectors (as seen before). These companies are called Industry Bodies.

Australian Examples of Industry bodies would be:• Apra/Amcos- Allows musicians to sell compositions and

copyrights• Aria- Takes care of Licensing and Royalties

Example of Relationship between Music Industry and other industries.

-Distributing physical copies of music (CD, Vinyl) to retail stores like JB Hifi, Target + online stores such as Amazon.

ECONOMIC VALUE OF AUSTRALIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY

Although it is very hard to find the exact value of the Australian music industry, it was recorded in 2012 that the live music economic value was $2.55 billion.

HOW THE MUSIC INDUSTRY CHANGED THE SOCIAL NORMS OF AUSTRALIA IN THE PAST

DECADELike most cultures, music has defined the way we dress, talk & view society. In the last 10 years, music has been quite important in Australia than it ever has been. Taste makers like Triple J + Mushroom music have been leading the movement and have imported international acts as well as domestic acts. In recent years, Australia has imported Hip Hop as a genre, much like Punk in the 1970’s and 80’s. Hip Hop has influenced Australia heavily into breaking through our culture and planting certain trends. Given the small movie industry in Australia, our music is like our Hollywood. With the ever growing popularity of music and its place in every ones lives, many jobs and opportunities have come out of this. Teachers, Music Publications (Magazines & Websites), engineers and many more have benefited from the Australia music industry, becoming the social norm to have specialty classes based around music industry jobs. This rise has given hope to a culture that was almost dead and has changed the opportunities young people can have.

EXAMPLES OF CAREERS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

• -Managers: Either an independent manager; meaning a manager is not from a label and is hired by the artist or a professional manager commissioned by the artists record label to manage areas of the bands career such as touring (if artist is not big enough for an individual tour manager), Promoter and finances. Managers are a vital part of an artist’s way of sharing their music as a professional.

• -Record Producer: A record producers job is to usually oversee the recording process. They will usually give insight into how the song/s should be mixed or might ask to rework a song to achieve it’s best sound. There are two types of Producers in the Recording industry, Music Producer & Executive Producer; who’s work is to manage the finances and overall marketability of the song/s. They can either be employed based on the studio you are at (working as both producer and engineer) or by the record label the artist is signed to. In nowadays there are many artists who self-produce their own work, as they like to keep it to their own artistic vision.

• -Audio Engineer: An audio engineer is the person who takes care of the mixing, recording and mastering of a recording session. They take care of the placing of microphones, equalization, the setting of levels and the overall responsibility of recording the artist.

THREE ASPECTS OF WORKERS RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITES WHEN EMPLOYED IN

CONTRACTED EMPLOYMENTThese are three aspects of the rights and responsibilities of a worker when in an contracted employment:

• Safety in the work place (Mental)

-This is the mental aspects of a workers safety. This includes not getting stressed & verbally abused by co-workers, which comes under harassment.

• Safety in the work place (Physical)

-This is the physical aspects of a workers safety. This includes heavy lifting, fire hazards, toxic hazards & more physical danger.

• Minimum Pay

A worker is required to be payed at least the legal minimum and is entitled to know about reduced pay prior to it happening.

UNIONS, EMPLOYER BODIES & PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

A union is something that represents workers rights and fairness in their line of work. For Musicians in Australia, there is the Musicians Union of Australia. They deal in a variety of things but the main one is that musicians get paid a fair amount of money for playing a show.

An employer body is a group of employees in the same or similar line of work coming together to support their fellow employees and strike negotiations with trade unions. Live Performance Australia is an example and takes care of the Fair Work act in music.

Music Council of Australia is a professional association that deals with these companies and gives them another voice.

ONE CAREER PATH THAT WOULD INVOLVE THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY

Recording Engineer:

• It requires the use of various equipment that records the music. Working with microphones, mixing desks, preamps, Midi Controllers & many more. All of these equipment requires an amount of specialist knowledge, that opens up career pathways. As the generations get more evolved, new technology is invented, this means even more opportunities for people to gain specialist knowledge about this equipment opening new jobs and demand.

Although new technology has been developed for people to use, there is a small demand in the knowledge of analog equipment (and older equipment) and therefore has also opened up the possibilities to other technology rather than new.

Neve 8078 Mixing Desk (1970’s)

ONE CAREER PATH THAT WOULD INVOLVE THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY

We used to use reel-to-reel tape machines to record music, now we have mp3’s, a digital file which means less space and better sound quality. This could represent the change in analog recording to digital recording, which are currently both in demand in the music industry.

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