Kafia Universal Artists

copyright:

     Who wrote Lady Gaga’s song?
·      The song Telephone” Performed by Lady Gaga,which was technically meant for Britney Spears. Before Stefani Germanotta was known as Lady Gaga, she was a songwriter, penning songs for The Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears. Gaga originally wrote "Telephone" to be included in Spears' Circus album.

    Has any of the Lady Gaga’s songs covered by any other artists?


·    After being dropped from a contract with “Def Jam Recordings” Gaga started to work as a song writer for Sony/ATV Music publishing, where other song writer “Akon” helped her sign to join the deal with interscope Records

 

    Has any of the Lady Gaga’s songs ever been leaked on line?
·        Yes, lady Gaga new album Joane has leaked a mere three days before its release and fans were officially torn because there’s  those who can’t wait and have managed to track down the leak, and on the other hand; who want people to calm down and wait until it goes on sale and then listen to it.

    Has Lady Gaga ever expressed a view on copyright?

• · Gaga doesn't view copyright as a bad way,it's all about protecting her image. She wanted to make sure that her music legally available to people because it would help her to increase exposure,Lady Gaga is signed to a 360 deal which gives her label a cut of touring, sponsorship.
•    Is Lady Gaga music available on Spotify?
•   Yes, her music is available on Spotify.

    How much Lady Gaga has earned through Spotify/streaming devices?

·        Lady Gaga’s track “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks during a five month period on Spotify and was played more than a million times. So how much money does she get paid by STIM (the Swedish Performing Rights Society).

·        Lady gaga earned just  £108 from one million plays of her hit "Poker Face" last year. 

    ownership

Which specific label is Lady Gaga band signed to?

·        “Akon” helped her sign to join the deal with interscope Records and his own label KonLive Distribution. Akon is credited with discovering Lady Gaga, working closely with the pop star on her first two albums.

·        Lady Gaga was finally signed to a major record label. She started working with new producers, including industry legend Tom lord Alge and Nadir khayat.

Has the artist collaborated with any other artist on the label?  

Yes, lady Gaga has collaborated a number of times with a range of different types of artists in  writing and the performance of songs. Below are a few example. 

The golden three by Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga. 

"3-Way (The Golden Rule)" is a song recorded by American comedy music group The Lonely Island featuring American singers Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga. It appeared as an SNL Digital Short in the May 21, 2011 episode of the sketch comedy television series Saturday Night Live (SNL), which saw Timberlake and Gaga as the host and musical guest, respectively. It was released as a single on May 24, three days after the broadcast. 

Starstruck ft Cowboy and Flo rida

Does the artist have a vevo channel? 

Yes, lady Gaga has a vevo channel in which music videos are regularly updated. 

Lady Gaga writes her own music however, she receives help from Martian bressro Nicholas mercier and Julien arias. 

convergence and synergy:

Has the artist collaborated or promoted by any of the companies within the vevndi group? 

Yes 

When lady gaga get's higher music releases, then it means that lady gagas record label interscope records which is owned by universal music group which is owned by vivendi.  This way vivendi get higher profit's and also get promoted.  

promotion and targeting audience:

Who is the target audience for lady gaga?  

Lady Gaga's target audience is mainly women teens to middle age women due the image of a successful women that she portrays.

How does Lady Gaga use obove the line promotion?  

One way that lady Gaga promoted her album is by opening the MTV music awards in which she performed her song from her new album artpop. This was a really affect way to promote her music because she has a wide range of target audience to promote her music to.

Universal Artist Taylor Swift

Taylor swift:

Copyright:

• Taylor swift wrote nine of the albums and 16 songs alone, while the remaining seven were co-written with Rose, Max Martin, Dan Wilson, Ed Sheeran, and Gary Lightbody. Furthermore, her songs have been covered by other artists such as Jennie Lopez singing with her song (jenny from the block) which made the song very popular and many other artists and celebrities sung her songs “Drops of Jupiter” by train”,” white blank page” by Mumford & sons and “Untouchable” by Luna Halo” etc. One of her song which repeats the same lines (this sick beat) which caused a huge problem for other artists, it contains the same word because they also have the similar content in their albums. Yes, her recent new album leaked online “1989” reaches back to the year of her birth for its motivation. But the superstar was forced to struggle with a very modern problem when music from the unreleased project leaked online on Friday (Oct 24). Moreover, swifts last album, ‘Red’, leaked in it’s entirely before it dropped in 2012, and went on to sell more than a million copies in its first week. Although it is a huge success for Taylor swift because it ultimately sold more than three million copies, making it the only Triple Platinum Album of 2012.

• Taylor swift’s songs have been leaked online, her album ‘1989’ has been leaked online on the 24th of October 2015. Songs like ‘Shake it off’ and ‘Blank space’ leaked from her album and were instant hits. They were removed from YouTube within hours.’ A California judge had thrown out a copyright lawsuit claiming that Taylor Swift stole lyrics for Shake It Off. In his legal documents, Braham claimed that his track, Haters Gone Hate, contained the same 22-word phrase that Swift had used within her song, which broke records in the US when it was released last year. There were various other leaks which had been leaked onto sites such as zippyshare.com, or via individual drop boxes. People believe that the album was leaked in France because the track numbers and all the album information was in French. Her album ‘Red’ was fully leaked in its entirety. This was bad for Taylor swift because people would have downloaded her songs without paying. Also, a lot of people would avoid buying her album because most of the songs would be online, which lead her to get less money from her latest album and decreases the demand for her song because it was much easier to access and get to listen from apps and illegal websites.

• Taylor swift and Spotify may have broken up last year, Swift has refused to put her new album “1989” on the digital music website. This isn’t the first time she refused to release an album with the online streaming service. In 2013 her album “Red” was not available for several months on Spotify. Taylor swift earned $2 million from streaming her songs over the past year but that’s not particularly true it seems that she got much less then this she said the domestic streaming pay-out from the past year was much lower at $ 500,000.

Ownership:

• Taylor swift has been signed with the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest artist ever signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. There are many artists that are signed to big machine record label such as Tara Thompson, the church sisters, Steven Tylor and many more. The label later signed artists such as Reba McEntire, Justin Moore, and Brantley Gilbert. In association with Universal Republic, Borchetta founded Republic Nashville, the first imprint under Big Machine Label Group, signing major country artist Martina McBride. Big Machine is based on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee, and is distributed by Universal Music Group. Swift worked with experienced Music Row songwriters such as Troy Verges, Brett Beavers, Brett James, Mac McAnally, and The Warren Brothers. She formed a long-term working connection with Liz Rose. Taylor Swift was also signed by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house, but left RCA Records when she was 14. The main genre produced by BMR is pop and Country. Unfortunately, Swift has not collaborated any songs on tour/ record with any other artists that are signed with BMR. All of her songs are distributed by Big Machine. Here is the evidence below:

Taylor Swift does have a Vevo-Channel. Taylor Swift has the most Vevo-certified videos.

          Convergence and Synergy:

• Taylor Swift is included in the most marketable artist, she is associated in plenty of brands including Diet Coke and Target, she also did a commercial for the brand Target, the advertisement included her latest album releases. Taylor Swift has a strong relationship with young celebrities, to connect with the fans, brands are the best way to get connected. By working with companies that have similar goals and values, this is the way to activate people who are already interested in your work because working in a brand/company that the audience(fan) believe in.

          Promotion and Targeting audiences

• Taylor Swift’s songs are suitable for very age group and gender, there is not a specific age group she aims at. Taylor swift relates to her fans by social media, Taylor tends to give brief insights into her life, she shares conversations with friends and fellow singers for example Ed Sheeran. One of her tweet was “that moment when you buy scissors and then you try to open them but you can’t because you “DON’T HAVE SCISSORS”, she vocalises those everyday thoughts and frustrations we all have somehow in our daily routine. She had more than 140 million followers and subscribers on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram . Taylor Swift recently released a song called “wildest dream”, featuring her in it, which shows that she doesn’t stop working, she keeps her fans entertained by her new releases. Taylor has been to interviews on television to promote her new releases, on both October 22^nd and 23^rd , she appeared on “Good Morning America”, the appearance took place in New York City. Also, to promote her album she made a special concert appearance on the “The Ellen DeGeneres show”. Moreover, she made several radio interviews, including the Nashville-based Taylor Swift worldwide radio remote presented by Papa Johns. Also, Taylor visits other countries to promote her Album/songs.

        Hardware and Content:

• 1989 is the fifth studio album by singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on October 27, 2014, through Big Machine Records and it took her very long to get prepared for her album “1989”. Over the period of two-year time she collaborated with producer Max Martin and Shellback. Martin support as the album's executive producer alongside Swift ; allows Swift to gross correct decisions for her future albums. Furthermore, her latest album 1989 was recorded in many different studios e.g. jungle city in New York, Convey studios in Los Angeles, Lamby’s house studios in Brooklyn and many more. Swifts album “1989” has been released on CDs , however, her album “Red” has been released on vinyl.
• Following the release of her fourth studio album, Red, and its corresponding tour, Swift was "six months deep in the song writing process. In November 2013, the singer told Billboard: "There are probably seven or eight (songs) that I know I want on the record. It's already evolved into a new sound, and that's all I wanted. During the promotion for the album, Swift said that she "woke up every single day not wanting, but needing to make a new style of music than I'd ever made before. Taylor Swift does not have any record of there being any new hardware being used in the production of her music. 

Universal Artist - Kanye West

Case Study – Research into a Universal music artist / band

Kanye West

Copyright:

Kanye has written some of his writes own songs like: Mercy, American Boy, Gold Digger, Waves and so much more but he doesn’t write all of his songs he works alongside many different artists to produce his songs.  Nick Jonas who is well known from the Jonas Brothers   has covered Kanye’s track, Only One. Katy Perry has covered N******  in Paris not the whole song just a verse. Conor Maynard has also covered Only One and Chase and Status have covered Fade. Black Skinhead from Kanye’s album Yeezus was leaked. Kanye originally uploaded the visuals to the video onto his website which later got taken down. A clip got uploaded onto Youtube which was rumoured to be the early edit of the video. Kanye then took to his twitter account to say how the video was not the official version and that the video would be released the following week. Famous is another song that has been leaked. Famous is from Kanye’s latest album The Life Of Pablo. The track got leaked through Twitter and what made this story huge was his lyrics in the song, it caused a big argument between Kanye and Taylor Swift which carried on even when the song got released officially.

Kanye was being sued over his 2013 single “New Slaves”. A complaint was filed by Hungarian composer Gabor Presser against Kanye with his song New Slaves, Kanye has “knowingly and intentionally misappropriated” one of his songs from his Yeezus’ song without a signed license agreement. Gabor Presser is stating that “New Slaves” samples “Gyongyhaju Lany” heavily. He wasn’t aware until the promotion of New Slaves came out. The suit is claming that Gabor still hasn’t been paid for over 2 years alongside $10,000 advance. This would be the main copyright infringement that Kanye has been involved in. Kanye’s music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and Amazon even though he is signed exclusively to Tidal he’s music is still available on Spotify.

Ownership:

Kanye has his own record label “Good Music” which stands for Getting Our Dreams Out which he is currently signed to. Good Music is signed to the worldwide label agreement Island Def Jam Music Group. Some artists that are signed to Good Music are: Big Sean, Tyga, Desiigner, Travis Scott, John Legend and many more. Some artists that were previously signed to Good Music were: Mr Hudson, Tony Williams and GLC. The genre within Good Music varies as there is a wide range of artists with different sounds signed to the label, so there wouldn’t be a specific genre that is tied to the label. Some people could argue and say they have more Hip-Hop/Rap artists on the label but officially from Good Music they don’t have genre. Kanye has collaborated with Big Sean with 14 songs, Pusha T with 12 songs, Kid Cudi with 11 songs, John Legend 11 songs and Common with 13 songs. Kanye has done a remix to a song with one of his artists “Desiigner” on his song Panda. These would be the main artists that he has worked close with within his label, but he hasn’t done any tours with his artists. Def Jam Recordings distributes the artists records. Good Music were signed to Def Jam Recording on June 27^th 2011. Kanye has had a huge success with his VEVO channel. KanyeWestVEVO has been active for 8 years, it was created May 11^th 2009 with over 2 million subscribers and 1 billion views across his VEVO channel. 

Convergence and synergy:

Kanye has collaborated with Adidas to create his own fashion line. He has achieved: Yeezy Season 1, 2, 3 and 4 as well as creating his own trainers, boots and heels. His Yeezy’s 350’s, 750’s and 950’s. He's also worked with the designer label Balmain to help with one of his songs "Wolves". In 2009 he worked with Lousi Vuitton to created a pair of trainers. Rockstar Games have featured Kanye’s song in GTA. Kanye has signed to Tidal which is a subscription-based music streaming service that allows you to watch exclusive fashion events and music videos.

Promotion and Targeting audiences:

I would say that Kanye's target audience is males aged 16-35, but I believe that his music is open to anyone who would love "real music" as Kanye said himself.



Kanye signing himself over to Tidal.

Above the line promotion

The Life Of Pablo: Kanye performed “Highlights” and “Ultralight Beam” on Saturday Night Live. Later on that day he released the album exclusively through Tidal. He also said a week after the album launched that he would release the album outside of Tidal even though he wanted people to sign up to the streaming service.

Yeezus: On May 17, he visually started to promote the album by displaying one of his unreleased song from his new album "New Slaves" through video projections in 66 different locations globally. He had them in locations like: New York, Toronto, Oslo, London, Paris and many more. Some of the buildings he had them projected on were the Universal Music building and the Arc de Triomphe. Kanye also appeared on the American TV show Saturday Night Live where he performed “New Slaves” and another unreleased track “Black Skinhead”. He officially released the name and cover of Yeezus on his website. In an interview he had a conversation about the album’s minimal promotion. He said "With this album, we ain't drop no single to radio. We ain't got no NBA campaign, nothing like that. Shit, we ain't even got no cover. We just made some real music.”

Below the line promotion

The Life Of Pablo: Kim Kardashian West, Kanye’s wife announced the return of “GOOD Fridays” leading up to the release of The Life Of Pablo. GOOD Fridays was a weekly free music giveaway that Kanye did to promote his fifth album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, free songs would come out every Friday to help promote the album. It also featured music from different artists from his label GOOD Music. The first song that was released on the first Friday was “Real Friends” which Kim posted on her Twitter account. GOOD Fridays was via Soundcloud. He premiered The Life Of Pablo at his Adidas Yeezy Season 3 fashion show at Madison Square garden. 

Yeezus: Kanye used social media to start promoting Yeezus. Kanye doesn’t usually use social media but when he does it because he’s making an announcement or he is stating his opinion. As Kanye had a new album coming out he used his Twitter account to start spreading the word. Kanye deleted all of his previous tweets and tweeted "June Eighteen", which lead his fans and the media to suspect that he’s tweet hinted to the release of his upcoming album.

Hardware and Content

Kanye with his daughter North West in his home studio.
His wife Kim Kardashian West posted this photo on Instagram with the caption
'Bring your daughter to work day!' 

Kanye in "Wolves" advertising Balmain's Fall 2016 Line.

It took Kanye, his team and other artists around three years (2013-2016) to record and finalize The Life Of Pablo. Many different songs on his album were recorded in different places around the globe e.g: Italy, Mexico, Canada and the US. As Kanye travelled a lot, this meant that he was recording his album on the go, majority of the album was recorded in recording studios in the city that he was visiting. He did also record some songs at his house in LA. He built a temporary studio in his mother-in-law’s house as he was living there with his wife and daughter at that time. One of studios he visited was Jungle City Studios, NY. Artists such as Beyoncé and Jay-Z have recorded there before. On his album Yeezus, he released 10 tracks, originally he was supposed to have 14 tracks on the album as advertised but it ended up having only 10 tracks. He released a digital and a physical copy. The Life Of Pablo had 20 tracks on it. It was rumored that he was going to release a deluxe physical copy with extra tracks on it which didn’t end up happening and it was only the digital copy available. Kanye only had two singles from Yeezus, Black Skinhead and Bound 2. Black Skinhead was the first single, released June 19, 2013 and Bound 2 was the second released August 28, 2013. Compared to The Life Of Pablo, he had three singles released: Famous, Father Stretch My Hands and Fade. Famous was the first released April 1, 2016, Father Stretch My Hands released June 7, 2016 and Fade released September 9, 2016. As Kanye produces his new music or any music he makes I wouldn’t say he has changed the hardware he uses as he has been making music since they came out. Kanye had no pre-release or exclusive releases from Yeezus. On the other hand, as G.O.O.D Fridays came back, Kanye pre-released a song every Friday on Soundcloud from The Life Of Pablo to the upcoming release of the album. One video that did have a 
promotional material featured was Wolves from The Life Of Pablo. It featured the Balmain Fall 2016 line which Kanye and Kim Kardashian West wore in the video.



Audience behaviour and consumption

Yeezus sold 327,000 copies in the first week of its release. The total album sale for Yeezus was 750,000 US Sales and 1,350,000 for the global sales, this was back in 2013. The total revenue from Kanye’s Yeezus Tour was $25,000,000. For The Life Of Pablo it has sold 28,000, as it was streamed on Tidal it was a limited buy. It had 250 million streams in the first ten days its release. This was due to the initial release of the album on Tidal leading to an increase in subscribers “Kanye supporters”, his supporters would then stream the album. The difference between the albums are significant as, Yeezus could be available to purchase at a store but The Life Of Pablo was only available online for supporters and other followers to stream. The figures are both high but you can see how streaming gave him a wider audience which got his album more out there compared to Yeezus. Yeezus came first in the UK and US Album charts. The Life Of Pablo had the same, UK and US album chart. The album had over 500,000 illegal downloads within the first three days of its release. Yeezus has no estimation of how many illegal downloads. 

Research Universal Artist Mo

Lil Wayne 

Copyright

1.      Gillie da kid was one of Lil Wayne’s writers, although his audience didn’t know that he didn’t write his songs. Lil Wayne was a unique artist that was recognized for distributing music that was told to the mass audience that the music he created was always improvised. This allowed him to expand his audience because he was thought as “different” compared to his competitors.

2.      One of the effective ways for Lil Wayne to promote his music, is by releasing music along side other artist, these artist release music featuring Lil Wayne, this then allows him to be discovered by a much larger audience.

This is a way of advertising his music within other acts. This could be very effective and helpful for Lil Wayne because if that specific song becomes a hit, then Lil Wayne can be discovered and recognized from that hit song. Thus succeeding with that artist. This also opens other windows of opportunities for Lil Wayne to take advantage of, if the act he synergized with succeeds, then he may be able to produce music with that artist in the future, as well as benefit from their late hits.

3.      Many of Lil Wayne songs have been leaked online, not only his songs but along with other artists. Their songs are leaked onto websites containing other illegal music. Even though the majority of people today do make illegal purchases online, this could be at some advantage for Lil Wayne. This is because some of his audience may not consider buying his music because of the ability to purchase music online. Having his music online not only it expand his audience, he will be able to reach a half of the market that will be able to hear his music as like a “free sample” what I mean by this is children today purchase illegal music online and those music tracks may not have a better copy then the original. This is beneficial because those who prefer a copy with higher quality would most likely purchase the original version.

4.      Unfortunately Lil Wayne hasn’t expressed a view on copyright, his opinion has never been brought upon the idea of copyright, and how it links to his sales and his music. But if his music was illegally downloaded on websites and it harmed his sales revenue, then he would have an issue to express, and most likely deal with it.  

5.      Yes Lil Wayne’s music is available on Spotify; his music can also be listened to but must be paid for the full copy. Spotify allows you to listen to tracks for free, this is helpful for Lil Wayne because it allows him to expand his audience by allowing more people to listen to his music, this way it promotes his advertisements by synergizing with spotify.

6.      Lil Wayne has made a significant amount of profit from spotify, it was a big help to his cross promotion because it reached further areas of the market. Once customers listen to his music on spotify, it makes them want to purchase spotify premium. This allows you to have much more benefits from listening to music on spotify. It requires the customer to pay monthly and so this makes spotify at an advantage. Lil Wayne gains from this because his music is recognized and can be listened to through applications such as spotify.

Ownership

1.      Lil Wayne signed to Cash Money Records at the age of 9, being the youngest member of the label with such talent and potential. His music continued to expand as the record label grew with him. The more music he continued to produced, the more people began to recognize him.

2.      Other artist include: Nicki Minaj, Drake and Birdman who either still or previously signed for the record label. The record label is estimated at 300 million. 

3.      The main genre that it produced by Cash Money Records is Hip/Hop and rap.

4.      Lil Wayne has collaborated with Drake and Nicki Minaj on the Cash Money record label. Working with both of them allows him to also expand his audience and to also profit on his sales since he’s benefits from combining his audience with Drake’s and Nicki Minaj’s.

5.      Universal music group is a big part in distributing Lil Wayne record but so is the company that Lil Wayne started (Young Money Entertainment). Universal is basically the parent company, above Young Money Entertainment.

6.      Lil Wayne does indeed have a Vevo channel, where his music is promoted in public places such as Youtube.

Convergence and synergy

1.      Lil Wayne negotiated terms with the CEO of Vivendi, Vincent Bollore, in ways his music can be promoted and recognized by the mass media

2.      Lil Wayne made an agreement with a liquor manufacturer, with Straight Up Brands, to create an all new, branded alcoholic beverage. This allows him to make profit by making deals with manufactures and promoting their alcoholics beverages.

   

Promotion and Targeting audiences

1.      The target audiences are teenagers to young adults who favor Hip/Hop and Rap genre.

2.      You could find Lil Wayne’s music on an advert on YouTube, or a poster near an underpass or station. This is above the line promotion because it is released to the mass audience, as well as his current target audience, it can be considered as the right choice to aim to the mass audience because you could grasp the interest of some of the audience that you didn’t plan to reach.

3.      Lil Wayne has fan pages, blogs, and social media on majority of platforms; this is below the line promotion because it aims towards the audience that already considers Lil Wayne to be of their interest. Below the line promotion is specifically for those who fancy Lil Wayne’s music, allowing them to either recommend or continue to listen to their music.  

4.      Lil Wayne benefits from promoting his music on social media because it reaches his audience on a global scale; social media today is used by the majority of the mass audience. Advertising on social media is a great way to reach your target audience.

Jay Z - Copyright

4. Has the artist ever expressed a view on copyright or been involved in a copyright case?

Jay Z was recently taken to court by the family of an Egyptian singer, who claimed that he had infringed copyright by sampling one of their father's tracks.  They claimed that because of the lyrical context in which the sample appeared, their father's cultural beliefs would have prevented him from granting permission for its use.  However, Jay Z had paid the record company that owned the copyright on the song and the judge dismissed the case, leaving Jay Z in the clear.  This shows that although the father created the music that Jay Z sampled, the record company owned the copyright on it and were, therefore, entitled to licence (allow its use) it as they saw fit.