Music As a Marketed Commodity: Strategies of Past, Present, and Future
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MUSIC AS A MARKETED COMMODITY: STRATEGIES OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University _______________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Science in Journalism ______________________________________ by Lauren R. Wittschen April 2021 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 PART 1: A Brief Overview of Music as a 3 Marketed Commodity PART 2: Case Studies 12 aaaaa2.1 Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero 12 aaaaa2.2 Radiohead - In Rainbows 14 aaaaa2.3 Hozier - “Cry Power” 16 aaaaa2.4 Kesha - “Raising Hell” 18 aaaaa2.5 Mabel - “Mad Love” 19 aaaaa2.6 Dani Fernández - Incendios 20 aaaaa2.7 Lauv - “i’m so tired...” 21 aaaaa2.8 Beyoncé - Beyoncé 22 aaaaa2.9 Kanye West - GOOD Fridays 23 PART 3: Focus Groups Method 25 PART 4: Discussion 28 aaaaa4.1 Focus Group 1 29 aaaaa4.2 Focus Group 2 35 aaaaa4.3 Focus Group 3 42 PART 5: Conclusion 48 Bibliography 59 Wittschen 1 INTRODUCTION Music and marketing are historically present across the globe - but modern Western music as a marketed form of entertainment, in comparison, is a fairly new concept. It’s a broad topic, encompassing everything from advertising channels to design choices, but this thesis will seek to approach the field from three segments of time: past, present, and future. In 2017, the American Marketing Association defined marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (“What is Marketing?”). This idea defines marketing as it’s used in this thesis; offerings of value, in this case, will refer to music as a whole. The goal of this thesis is to understand music marketing as it has existed, currently exists, and will continue to exist. Its practical application will come in its identification of consumer thoughts and behaviors regarding different music marketing campaigns, and then in its ability to explain why these thoughts and behaviors are effective in marketing. Ultimately it seeks to uncover what strategies have been used successfully in music marketing, and then determine what these strategies reveal about the future of music marketing. A review of each part of this thesis is as follows. Part 1 introduces an overview of the history of Western music as a marketed commodity, beginning in the early seventh century. It traces one timeline of the basic development of music marketing until modern times; it seeks to provide readers with context and understanding of this thesis’s topic. Part 2 details nine prominent music marketing case studies. These case studies allow readers to comprehend concrete examples of music marketing; in general, they are Wittschen 2 particularly useful when one is seeking to understand a concept in its natural setting (Crowe et al.). Case studies as a research method serve as one of the most popular forms of qualitative research, which this thesis seeks to obtain. (Rashid et al.). Four of these case studies were chosen due to their historical influence, while the other five were taken from an updated resource at the time this thesis was researched (2020). Part 3 explains the development and execution of three digital focus groups, used here as another form of qualitative research. In a focus group, participants are led in discussion by a moderator, where they “[focus] on a preselected centralized topic” - in this case, the topic was the phenomena discussed in the case study research (Allen). Part 4 unravels the findings of the focus groups and explores the connections between acquired insights and existing research. It’s guided by the first part of the overarching research framework by attempting to explain what strategies have been used effectively in modern day music marketing. In the conclusion of this thesis, Part 5 provides more historical background to contextualize the future of music marketing; it answers the foremost question of this thesis by using consumer insight to predict trends in what’s to come. Wittschen 3 PART 1 A Brief Overview of Music as a Marketed Commodity “If the first music was for gods, what came later was for Kings...But in proportion to the rise of the middle classes and the decline in the prestige of the nobility, the bourgeois, in their turn, began to claim their share in the activities of the gods.”- Jacques Chailley (qtd. in Carlton 126). The current practices of an industry dominated by change are best understood by a look into the past. In their review of the landscape of Western music marketing, Ogden et al. explain its history as a framework broken into several phases: the interpersonal level, the production level, an innovative level, a sales-orientation level, and, finally, where music marketing stands today: a customer-oriented level. Part 1 of this thesis will explore Ogden et al.’s framework of music marketing history, as well as the ways in which their framework fits into the stages of marketing theory evolution as proposed by author and widely-recognized marketing professional Philip Kotler. His theory includes five stages: the production orientation, the product orientation, the sales orientation, the marketing orientation, and societal marketing (Ingram). Comparing these two frameworks allows consumers to recognize music’s development as a commodity - even though this process began centuries ago, it’s progressed to adhere to modern marketing theory. According to Ogden et al., the first level of marketing is the interpersonal level. This precedes other forms of consumerism by reaching the heart of music: emotion and self-expression. Communication between the producer, in this case, the musician, and the consumer, or the listener, is, by definition, marketing, but this “association (emotional connections between artists and consumers) [forms] the basis of music and music marketing and [allows] the musician and consumer to connect at the interpersonal level.” (Ogden et al. 120). Wittschen 4 While this interpersonal connection was especially important in the earliest days of music sharing, its lasting relevance cannot be overstated. Even today, writes O’Donoghue, drawing on the ideas of Urista, Dong and Day, “... individuals use social networking sites to experience a selective, efficient, and immediate connection with others for their interpersonal communication satisfaction and as an ongoing way to seek the approval and support of the other people” (14). The interpersonal level is not so much about sales as it is about creating a relationship on which future marketing efforts can be based. Archeological research has traced the origins of music to nearly 36,000 years ago (d’Errico et al. 39). Music marketing, however, is connected to the early seventh century development and spread of Gregorian Chants - the ideas of Ogden et al.’s production level of marketing can be seen around this time. Under the rule of Pope Gregory, Gregorian chants diversified the plainchants common at religious masses after the 313 AD rise of European Christiniaty (Ogden et al. 121). Gregorian chants were unique because of their musical notation. Anyone, including the church, could perform the music exactly as it was written. In a time where “experimentation” and diversion from accepted religious practice was frowned upon, the standardization of church music became a means of control for religious leaders (Ogden et al. 120). “The end result was that as a widely accepted standard media,” write Ogden et al., “written musical notation allowed for the mass consumption of music” (121). In the production level of marketing, the primary focus is on product production - there’s very little, if any, thought given to the wants or needs of consumers. Ogden et al.’s production level is paralleled in the idea of product orientation, or “the view that the route to corporate success lies in production efficiency, getting production costs as Wittschen 5 low as possible (usually by manufacturing in very large volume) in order to reduce costs and prices” (Claessens). One understands that the individual wants or needs of the customer are often ignored; no thought was given to the desires of religious music consumers during this time. These chants were written and distributed without change. Ogden et al. go on to explain the changes to religious music brought about by the 16th century rise of Protestantism. Catholics had already begun to disregard previously established guidelines about musical instruments in their use of organs during mass; even more radically, Protestants began to use the organ in their services for musical accompaniment beyond “mirroring the singing” (Ogden et al. 121). However, the continued development of music marketing is attributed to secular music that existed at the time. Independent musicians were treated more like servants than artists in that they had to work more diligently to earn money. With so many musicians competing for so few resources, performers needed to make themselves, not just their music, interesting - this gave way to the idea of branding (Ogden et al. 121). As discussed later in this thesis, branding is an important part of creating desirability, authenticity, and accessibility - many artists strive to create an all-encompassing brand, combining aspects of their music and personal identity. As Croft and Kubacki argue, it is “almost impossible to consider music as a product in isolation: it is usually necessary to talk of the people (performers, writers, producers) who make up the product offering” (583). From here out this thesis will refer to each artist discussed as their own brand. Demand for secular music and musicians, driven by newly available literature, was met by the rise of the printing press and the increasing availability of printed sheet music (Ogden et al. 121). Diversification of available music options drove consumers further from the production Wittschen 6 orientation level of marketing and towards the product orientation.