Research: Institutions

What is an institution?

An institution is an establishment, or centre founded for the benefit of educational, professional, religious, or social purpose. An institution will therefore govern the generic behavior of a set of figures from within the specified community. For the music industry, institutions are organizations that set out an and criteria, and then sign artists/bands that meet the criteria in order to help in their career and attract revenue for them as an institution. Most, if not all popular artists/bands are signed to institutions across the world, with the sense that being signed to an institution brings success as they may have had success with other artists already signed to them, using this a bait to lure in more upcoming artists with potential. However, some artists choose to decline signing to institutions and instead carry on their career without these institutions due to its negative outlook and the risk of being altered into creating a star image that is not them and possibly against their morals.

There are many institutions globally reaching out for new stars, however, there are four leading institutions within the music industry constantly finding new talent and moulding them into the perfect stars they wanted to be. The first of the leading institutions is EMI, a multinational conglomerate music label founded and based in Britain. EMI deemed it their job to take smaller less known artists/bands and transform them into global successes rather than allow them to carry on as singular independent artists. Signing artists like Coldplay, Jared Leto, The Beatles, EMI have been one of the dominating institutions within the industry, producing endless streaks of talented artists/bands, however they became a defunct company from September 28^th 2012.

Sony Music Entertainment are the second of the four leading institutions in the music industry producing musical talents and creating stars on a bigger scale than the artists ever dreamt. An American label and company owned by Sony through Sony Entertainment, making it a subsidiary company, Sony Music reach out for promising talents with the potential of making it big. Beyonce, Robbie Williams, ASAP Rocky and Prince, amongst many others, are various artists who have signed to Sony Music and made it, amplifying Sony’s track record of global successes. Unlike EMI, Sony are not a defunct company and are still running, still successful and producing a new crop of talents such as The Chainsmokers and J Cole.

Universal Music Group is an American and French, global subsidiary music corp.  that controls French based media conglomerate group Vivendi, they are based in Santa Monica, California. Also founded in September 1934, they have gone on to create a variety of subsidiary groups, with their most known subsidiary groups being Def Jam and Interscope Recordings. They have also gone onto sign artists/bands and generate as many popular artists as its competitors. They have gone on to sign Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Adele and Queen amongst a wide variety of other artists.

Warner Music Group is an American multinational record label conglomerate based in New York City. They also indulge in the media industry and are as much a conglomerate in media as they are in media. However, they have more interests in recorded music, music publishing and artist servicing. Founded in 1958 they are now worth more than 2 billion dollars, and have gone on to sign major artists like Madonna, Wiz Khalifa, David Guetta and Ed Sheeran. With EMI not as huge as it used to be after the company defunct and selling to Virgin, Warner and the latter two have gone onto increase its power in the music industry creating more subsidiary groups from within and allowing other artists with a potential for success to generate a powerful career in the music industry.

Conclusion

When it comes to creating an artist to sign for any of the four leading institutions, I would make sure they have as much global appeal as I would like them to, ensuring that they have the capabilities to make it from all four institutions. Because of EMI’s slow start after their defunct it would be risky to sign to them, so it would be a choice of the other three. So for my artist, I would prefer them to sign for Sony as they are highly known and respectable within the industry, they also have links to other industries which can help in the global sale of my upcoming artist, thus clearing the path for a potentially successful career in the music industry.