Music Industry- Record Labels

Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music was founded in 1929 under the name American Record Cooperation, and was renamed Columbia Recording in 1938 after being bought by CBS. Sony Cooperation bought the company in 1991 and renamed it SME, it is the worlds second largest music company, only behind universal music group.
Sony own the rights to many of the worlds most successful artists such as Beyoncé, Justin Timber lake, Kings of Leon, Britney Spears and many more as well as owning the rights to  artists who are considered iconic such as Michael Jackson and Madonna.

As they are a major music label they tend to own companies across a range of media so a lot of sonys marketing is done online on short video adverts on social networking sites or YouTube etc or they sometimes will advertise a new release on an advert on TV, and they will obviously have the artists new releases available as both a CD in stores or as a digital download online.

IAMSOUND

 

IAMSOUND is an independent record label based in USA that was founded as recently as 2006, the label specialises in trying to promote LA (local) based music but also owns several English artists such as Florence and The Machine, Little Boots and Charlie XCX.

 

The main way in which IAMSOUND market their artists is through online marketing in the hope that some of their lesser known artists work goes viral, which has happened before. They also host a yearly festival which is exclusive to artists owned by the company and is a good way to show off some of their smaller artists and promote them alongside the more well known ones. They will also have many CDs and digital copies of their artists releases, although they may not be as accessible as they would be for a major label. As IAMSOUND are an independent label they will also use radio stations to get their artists work out to the public as much as possible.