Marketing strategy of EMI group

Résumé du document

I choose to do my arts marketing report on the EMI Group operational in the music industry because it's an English company which many people are unaware of and is one of the world's leaders in the music industry. The company is an independent music publisher and owns record labels such as Blue Note, Virgin and Capitol Records. EMI releases more than 1,000 albums every year and has a roster of over 1,500 artists. The firm is active in over 50 countries, with licensees and distribution agreements in a further 20 countries. The company is based in London and employs about 6,300 people. The company recorded a turnover of £2,079.9 million during fiscal year ended March 2006, an increase of 3.9% over 2005. The operating profit of the company was £250.5 million during fiscal year 2006, an increase of 20.2% over 2005. The company's operations are broadly run through two divisions, EMI Music and EMI Music Publishing.

Extraits

[...] This means a price per song or album instead of a subscription to a website as that is what Apple offers. It seems a problem that the company's strategy is only adaptable to à la carte website and not subscription websites as that would mean an extra fee to the consumers. The average monthly fee for a subscription website is $ which once paid, grants the costumer access to the website's music catalogue. Some consumers might also be reluctant to end their subscription fee of their usual music website and step over to iTunes Music Store as Apple only offer AAC format music and only 10% of the current available mp3 players support that format. [...]

[...] Indeed, with music available on the internet for free and easily transferable to an mp3 player, the music albums are selling a lot less and even top chart artists are struggling to keep the statistics at a reasonable level. It is thus obvious that music companies are getting mugged, but that is not the only problem they are having trouble with. The illegal downloading of music tracks on the internet is not seen as theft by “consumers”. Recently another operator of online music trading called CD-Wow has been targeted by leading music companies for illegally importing CDs into the UK. [...]

[...] Music publishers earn their revenue by licensing the right to use their song. The other division, EMI Music, scouts potentially successful recording artists, signs them under recording contracts, collaborates with them to produce recordings of their work, markets the finished recordings to consumers and radio, and sells the releases into the retail trade in a variety of formats. First, I'm going to describe the previous marketing activity of EMI, followed by an analysis of the newest marketing strategy of the company concerning the digital music format distribution and evaluate its effectiveness. [...]

[...] The answer to the question if whether EMI's strategy will be successful depends on the reaction of the consumers. There is a chance it will increase piracy even more but it could also change the trend as EMI's strategy is also to differentiate with an improvement of the audio quality of their tracks and with a significant price drop said to be of at least 25% in the UK and of at least 30% in Europe and the US. If consumers are seeing this as a major change, which it is, they would certainly consider opting for the new proposition of EMI as music prices are set to drop, quality to increase and with non-DRM, more easily transferable than before, exactly the changes consumers said to be imperative if the music industry were ever to beat piracy. [...]

[...] EMI releases more than 1,000 albums every year and has a roster of over 1,500 artists. The firm is active in over 50 countries, with licensees and distribution agreements in a further 20 countries. The company is based in London and employs about 6,300 people. The company recorded a turnover of million during fiscal year ended March 2006, an increase of over 2005. The operating profit of the company was 250.5 million during fiscal year 2006, an increase of over 2005. [...]