Write the report about your presentation dealing with the British music industry

763 words
.
For Mr. Colin Wilson

Student no 26151

The submission is due by Wednesday the tenth of December

Music is very important to a country’s culture broadcast and this involves an importance in its economy as well. On this date, according to ukmusic.org, the United Kingdom music industry has been contributing 3.56 billion pounds to the country’s economy. The purpose of this report is thus to understand the main steps through the last century that led to this huge music industry contribution in the British economy .First, the British recorded music “revolution”, that have taken place between the 1950s and the 1970s, will be discussed. Then, technological progress between the 1990s to today and its assets and drawbacks will be analysed.

Between the 1950s and the 1970s the Great-Britain has seen a recorded music revolution.
Two main causes were associated to this “revolution”:
1) An important increase in the demand of manufactured popular music among the UK;
2) The appearance of new technologies. Indeed various new recorded music formats were introduced, such as compact tape cassettes in the mid-1970s. They heightened the quality and lowered the cost and scale of production.
Its principles were the stepping to the fore of singles and long-playing albums and the increasing of independent record companies’ market share.
The British recorded music “revolution” had many consequences. There was an enhancement in the importance of managers; independent record companies and producers; entrepreneurial artists claiming their rights to a greater share in decision-making and profits, as well as the weakening of an earlier vertically integrated business model in which big companies used to dominate music production and sales.

Uk recorded music production

Source: Business History, Apr 2010 volume 52, issue 2, page 191
As we can see, the recorded music sales increased hugely between 1955 and 1980. They rose from around from around 60 million (1955) to around 220 million products in 1980. We can link this to the Long Playing record sales increase since they moved from around 10 million to 70 million products within the same period. Thus it can be deducted that this massive increase in the music sales is mainly due to the success that the Long Playing recording invention achieved.
That is how the British music market, between the 1950s and the 1970s, by becoming at the same time more competitive and more transatlantic than the American one, that always used to be the leader in the previous decades, became the first leading music market in the world.
Also, the Beatles band was a proof of success of the British recorded music “revolution” and, more generally, of the British music industry. Its members brought together their own songwriting, with huge international record sales, their performances and expansive promotional live performance touring. They were also the first mega-band to write and perform their own songs, showing it was a viable business model.
So, the British recorded music “revolution” implied big positive changes in the status of the British music industry. Afterwards, with the technological progress from 1990s to today, other big changes occurred but this time as positively as negatively.
The main elements of progress occurring in the 1990s were:
The move from vinyl long-playing records to compact disks;
Personal computers became widely available to public since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web web browser;
As internet had been restrained commercially for five years (until 1995), public judgment began to