Record companies are suffering the worst from illegal downloads according to head of marketing at DECCA Records, Emma Newman. She spoke to students at University College Falmouth the other week who were interested to know more about the marketing side of the music industry.
Illegal downloading has always been seen as a problem for the artists who make the music and then don’t get paid for it because of the free downloads. According to Newman the artists get the money back from the live tours and merchandise. “Record companies have had it great for years when you would sell a record to promote a tour,” she said “whereas now, you can get the music for for free and the band and the agent will make money touring but the record company won’t.”
Now record companies are trying to get a cut of the ticket sales. Some are trying out something called a 360 deal, where the artists agrees to the record company getting a share of everything when they sign to the label. Often this doesn’t work when they are up against another company offering a deal without taking a cut from the profits the artist might make.
“We are trying to find different ways of making money through partnerships,” she said, “we’ve started to make money through Spotify and Youtube, we’re getting 0.3p per click on Youtube at the moment.” Artists on the label are teaming up with large companies such as Windows to hep promote both the new product the company is trying to sell and the song the artist is trying to sell.
The issue is less of a problem for a more established record company like DECCA with lots of well known artists, but for smaller labels with less known artists, money is a big problem.
DECCA single
Emma Roberts 