SME vs Century Media Records

SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (MAJOR RECORD LABEL) & CENTURY MEDIA (INDEPENDENT RECORD LABEL)

SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT INFOIt is currently the world’s second largest record company behind Universal Music Group.

Is the US subsidiary of Japan’s Sony Corporation and was founded in 1929, called American Record Corporation.

Features local artists and international superstars from labels such as Columbia, Epic and Sony Classical.

Sony Music Entertainment operates in 43 countries worldwide and it’s headquarters is based in New York.

Has a partnership with VEVO – an on-demand music video and entertainment platform.

Also partnered with Syco, a global joint venture with Simon Cowell which focusses on the production and exploitation of music, television and digital content.

Artists include Cults, MGMT, and Daft Punk

SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT TAXI ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN (2011)In September 2011, SME UK launched a taxi advertising campaign for the promotion of new albums and singles from 11 popular artists from the Columbia record label (subsidiary of SME) e.g. Foo Fighters, Kasabian, Vaccines, Katy B and Calvin Harris.

100 taxis in Central London showcased the artwork of each artist’s album and once inside, the passenger gets to hear tracks by the label’s most influential artists.

This Out of Home advertising is recognised most commonly by people who live in cities and who have the money to spend on entertainment products, therefore taxi advertising was best aimed at this market.

The taxi advertising creates hype around the artist’s new material and makes the customers anticipate the release of the new album.

Tourists, locals and commuters would want to get in the taxi purely to hear the music being played by popular artists. Passengers also have the chance to enter a competition to win a Columbia Label tote bag. This encourages participation with Columbia, and generates more people looking at their website.

Out of home advertising helps to drive the success of global brands. It also lets the public know that the product is available to purchase .

The importance of brand recognition is prolific in the heavily saturated market of music and entertainment. Columbia will overcome this as the taxis promoting the artwork will allow visual recall online and in store at the point of sale.

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Founded by Robert Kampf in 1988 in Germany. From 1995 to 2007, Marco Barbieri was the label’s president. The label is now based in the USA.

Today Century Media Records is recognized around the globe as a dominating force within their specialized market and one of the world's premier labels for metal, hard rock and hard-core. 

In August 2011 Century Media decided to pull all of their acts from Spotify, an online music streaming service, citing this as "an attempt to protect the interests of their artists". Metal blog ‘Metal Sucks’ criticized Century Media in a post, which was later replied to by the label in an email. On July 30, 2012, Century Media Records made their entire catalog available on Spotify again after "impressive debates and messages from fans" and discussions with Spotify.

Always at the forefront with an active role in emerging stylistic nuances Century Media has truly shattered the barriers and exemplified diversity in extremes while remaining rooted in the underground but giving bands opportunities outside of the normal means with major league international touring, commercial radio play, and music placement in high-profile films, TV and commercials. Despite all of the years and breakthroughs the company maintains their organic, family feel and business is still being conducted by fans of the music for fans of the music.

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I mainly listen to metal music and recently, when I listen to this kind of music on YouTube, I have noticed ‘Century Media’ adverts before the songs I listen to. The adverts are shown on videos that are in the same genre of music as bands under the Century Media record label.

In the advert are different music by different bands in the label and as someone who likes heavy metal music, I instantly looked at the label’s website to find out the band names and songs by these bands because I liked the music played in the advert.

Therefore I believe this is a very effective way of advertising because it specifically targets a niche audience by advertising their Website/YouTube channel on songs within their genre of music.

The bands whose music the advert plays before include Motionless in White, Black Veil Brides, Amaranthe, Nekrogoblikon, Nightwish, and Within Temptation.

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