The music industry is a very competitive business to be in. Getting into this part of the sector of Media can be tough, as the competition for the jobs are high and a lot of them require work experience, as well as qualifications.
Having work experience can help you a lot when getting into music, and just the Media industry in general.
Employers will look for good knowledge and good qualifications in your chosen industry. Getting work experience before hand can give you a much higher chance of being employed and having a degree in a subject relevant to what you want to do.
There are many companies in the music industry, like record labels, and even the stores such as HMV. The major record labels such as Warner Music Group (WMG) EMI and Sony Music Entertainment recruit a huge amount of people, ranging from Runners and studio assistants to record producers and artist managers. Getting employed by big record labels can be hard, so getting experience or a job with a independent or a fairly small label will be much more easier and can gain experience which you can then take over to getting employed in a much more higher role.
There are many arguments about the music industry being killed by people downloading illegally. In my opinion, downloading music illegally could be effecting the music industry in some ways, but on the other hand the people who do it could be influenced to go and buy the music because they like it so much. Also, there are people who like to have the CD to hand and like to collect them.
Warner Music Group used to be part of Time Warner, but in 2004 spun off from it and does not retain any ownership of it. WMG owns other record companies as well, such as Atlantic Records and Warner Bros Records. These companies which are owned by WMG distribute other labels as well. This company dates back to around the mid 1950's, when Warner Bros Records was founded, as a division of Warner Bros, the movie studio.
EMI Records is owned by there parent company EMI, as the successor to its Columbia label. The label was founded by EMI in 1972 and the parent company has expanded over the years. Now having another company called EMI Music Publishing, which is based New York, it is the fourth largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry.
Sony Music Group was founded in 1929 as the American Record Corporation (ARC) through several smaller record companies. In 1968 CBS and Sony formed CBS/Sony Records, which is a Japanese and as Sony was one of the developers behind the compact disk, a compact disk production plant was built in Japan, allowing CBS to begin supplying some of the first compact disks to the American market.
Sony Music Group is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, which is the umbrella company under all of Sony companies in America.
Some of the subsidiary businesses are Sony Electronics INC, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Online Entertainment LLC.
