The definition of music is an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color. But who did it come from…?
The music industry is where the companies and individuals make money by creating and selling music. The musicians in this organization make extra money by going on tours and doing payed gigs. The companies who create and sell recorded music are music publishers, producers, recording studios, engineers, record labels, music publishers, producers, recording studios, engineers, record labels, etc. The current music industry emerged around the middle of the 20th century, when records had supplanted sheet music as the largest player in the music business: in the commercial world, people began to talk about "the recording industry" as a loose synonym of "the music industry".
A large majority of this market for recorded music is controlled by three major corporate labels: the French-owned Universal Music Group, the Japanese-owned Sony Music Entertainment, and the US-owned Warner Music Group. The largest portion of the live music market is controlled by Live Nation which is the largest promoter and music venue owner. Live Nation is a former subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, which is the largest owner of radio stations in the United States. Creative Artists Agency is a large a management and booking company. Since 2000, sales of recorded music have dropped off substantially while live music has increased in importance. The largest music retailer in the world is now digital: (some of these you should know because we use and brag about them every day) Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. The two largest companies in the industry are Universal Music Group (recording) and Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Group and Warner Music Group are known as the "Big Four" majors. Labels outside of the Big Four are said as independent labels. Until the 18th century, the processes of formal composition and of the printing of music took place for the most part with the support of patronage from aristocracies and churches. In the mid-to-late 18th century, performers and composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began to look for commercial opportunities to market their music and performances to the general public. After Mozart's death, his wife (Constanze Weber) continued the process of commercialization of his music through an unprecedented series of memorial concerts, selling his manuscripts, and collaborating with her second husband, Georg Nissen, on a biography of Mozart. In the 19th century, sheet-music publishers dominated the music industry. In the United States, the music industry rose in tandem with the rise of black face (African American) minstrelsy. In the late part of the century the group of music publishers and songwriters which dominated popular music in the United States became known as Tin Pan Alley. At the dawn of the early 20th century, the recording of sound began to function as a disruptive technology to the commercial interests publishing sheet music. Commercially released phonograph records of musical performances starting in the late 1880s, and later the onset of widespread radio broadcasting starting in the 1920s, forever changed the way music was heard. Opera houses, concert halls, and clubs continued to produce music and perform live, but the power of radio allowed obscure bands to become popular on a nationwide and sometimes worldwide scale.
The record industry eventually replaced the sheet music publishers as the industry's largest force. A multitude of record labels came and went. Some note-worthy labels of the earlier decades include the Columbia Records, Crystalate, Decca Records, Edison Bell, The Gramophone Company, Invicta, Kalliope, Pathé, Victor Talking Machine Company and many others.
Many record companies died out as quickly as they had formed, and by the end