Evolution of Light Music

Introduction

From traditional media (Radio and TV) to the internet age with online and mobile phones It is called "light music", that type of music that has no other purpose than to entertain, distract and that is easy to "enjoy" or that, to understand the reason, a great effort of concentration is not necessary. Uncommitted (ie light) music, after all, has always existed; already in the Renaissance period. In fact, alongside the great "cultured" music of the "Venetian and Roman School", there were scattered throughout almost all of Italy, especially in Florence, Mantua and Naples, less demanding musical forms such as the Villotte, Villanelle, Strambotti, Frottole, Tarantelle, etc. Even the great musicians of the last century did not disdain composing catchy, easily assimilated motifs, intended for the general public, for the purpose of fun and entertainment. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s however, there was an increasing demand for this (light) musical genre to be attributed probably to several factors, so as to substantially change its physiognomy (Webster et al., 2018. One of these was that in this period, "learned" music was becoming more and more complex, difficult to follow and assimilate, the major and minor ways to which the general public was abandoned were abandoned, and are still used to it (at least western), so it will begin to opt for the light and leisure genre. Finally, only connoisseurs, amateurs, as well as music critics, will follow classical or "learned" music. Other factors that will contribute to the spread of the light genre were the great success obtained by the Operetta, which arrived in America taking the name of Musical, and the appearance of the first gramophones, radios and all mass media that give the possibility to involve the whole population in a short time, making light music become a mass phenomenon (Frith et al., 2016). The first record companies and radio broadcasts are born, to which the commercials will be connected; people listen to their favourite song, then the spot airs, so that the game of interests becomes great. The company pays the spot on the radio but in return, thanks to it, it gets publicity for its product. The audience's attention is kept alive thanks to the favourite song; the radio makes substantial profits by airing the spot and the musician, thanks to this, becomes famous, thus selling a large quantity of records (Rozbicka and Conroy, 2017).

Discussion over music industry

Pop music as we understand it appears parallel to the great industrial development of the U.S.A. and in Italy after the Second World War, in which the password "produce" is in force, but above all consumes, so that it can be produced again. For this reason, the melodies will be deliberately simple and trivial, so that they are immediately bored to be able to replace them with others. What favours all this is the great material well-being (especially after the Second World War) which gives the young man a lot of free time.

Beltrand Russell Berns, known as Bert Russell, for all Bert Berns. Born way back in November 1929 in Bronx County, New York.

He was one of the most extravagant and brilliant song composers in the history of music, and beyond. A man who died young, only 38 years old, founded the legendary record company "Bang Records" together with other partners. The Bert Berns who wrote some of the songs that have entered the legend of pop-rock music including "Twist And Shout", "Piece of My Heart", "Here Comes the Night" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", just to name a few the one who contributed to the fame of Van Morrison and Neil Diamond. It was a distant day in November 1929, when Beltrand Russell Berns, known as Bert Russell, was born in Bronx County, New York, for all Bert Berns (Frith et al., 2019).

He was one of the most extravagant and brilliant song composers in the history of music, and beyond. A man, who died young, only 38 years old, founded the legendary record company "Bang Records" together with other partners. The Bert Berns who wrote some of the songs that have entered the legend of pop-rock music including "Twist And Shout", "Piece of My Heart", "Here Comes the Night" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", just to name a few the one who contributed to the fame of Van Morrison and Neil Diamond (Publications.parliament.UK. 2020).

The established musician and rich producer who later became friends with the godfather Don Vito Genovese, heir to Lucky Luciano, with whom he apparently intertwined a real friendship, under the astonished eyes of the C.I.A ..His first great success in the music sector was a song written in 1961 entitled "A Little Bit of Soap" which was followed by a hit "Top Ten", or a song (Tell Him) that entered the ranking in the top ten best-selling songs in the USA After just a year he wrote, together with Phil Medley, his first great masterpiece "Twist and Shout" produced for Atlantic Records by a very young Phil Spector, another man destined to later become one of the most influential and important arrangers of all the history of contemporary music. "Twist and Shout" was first played by the US group The Isley Brothers and then brought to success by the fabulous Beatles who included it in their first album "Please Please Me" in 1963. A song in personalised versions became a workhorse in the live performances, by the Beatles themselves, Bruce Springsteen and even Elvis Presley (Publications.parliament.UK. 2020).

Among the many hits the famous "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" stands out, a song also written by Bert Berns together with Jerry Wexler and Salomon Burke in 1964. The first version was sung by Salomon Burke "the King of Rock'n'Soul", then became a cover of the Rolling Stones and finally had a great return in the magnificent musical cult film "The Blues Brothers" by John Landis, in particular in the scene shot in the hotel with the splendid performance of the brothers Jake "Joliet" Blues (John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd).

As for Bert Berns, producer and partner of Bang Records, an independent record label founded in 1965, it was a success after another. Bang Records had the merit of discovering and launching the likes of The Strangors, The McCoys, Neil Diamond and Van Morrison. Again there was something singular, such as the choice of the name, which is nothing more than an acronym formed by the initials of the names of its four founding partners: - Bert (B), Ahmet (A), Nesuhi (N) , Gerald (G). The logo of the new label based in Bern is also bizarre, which was seen symbolized by an explosion of a Derringer pistol, depicted in a brand that became very famous throughout the recording sector. The spread of the web in the early 90s was also effective where Radio and Television media are effective to promote the music. The creation of supports for mp3 files from Apple and after 2000 the appearance of Smartphone made it possible to enjoy the music product more and more personalized by the final consumer. The cost-effectiveness of the support and the presence of a pocket computer such as the Smartphone for each person have potentially expanded the music market to the maximum. Furthermore, the possibility of profiling the tastes of each individual user allows the possibility of reaching the consumer by applying direct marketing to the maximum. In other words, send the product to which they are surely and potentially interested directly to a cluster of homogeneous people. Hereby, in the recent years, Smartphone is laying crucial role where the producer can interact with the customers and promote their services online (Eales, 2019).

Responding to shift to revenue rather than physical sales

So if before the nineties the promotion of the musical product was only mass generalized with TV and radio in programs (famous music magazines, hit parades and record stores), festivals, concerts or musical events, with the era of internet the square or the market becomes an immaterial square made up of users connected on the net. Hardware support (vinyl disc before and cd after or magnetic tape like cassettes) is in crisis widely replaced by the digital file. In the internet age, a record company is no longer needed, but an artist can create his own music, video and sound product and spread it through the network using social media (Publications.parliament.UK. 2020).

The record industry had the sad privilege of representing the sector invested first, and with strong structural repercussions, from the phenomenon that years later would have gone down in history as a global economic crisis. In 2000, in fact, the market for recorded music reached its peak after the record decade of the 90s, to then take a long tunnel due to suicidal commercial choices, such as the policy of privileging the sale of albums at the expense of discs singles and the reckless increase in CD prices, and the development of the internet and new means of enjoying music that have led to a disruption of the entire system.

After the historic digital overrun of "physical" revenue in 2015, the latter reached another milestone in 2016, now representing for the first time 50% ($ 7.8 billion) of all sales of music (Piazza, Phillips and Castellucci, 2019).

More importantly, 2016 was the second consecutive year in which the recorded music market grew after nearly two decades of steadily declining sales, during which time revenues dropped nearly 40 percent to their peak, bass.

This industrial sector, accustomed to easy position returns, had to invest and innovate to adapt first to the new digital era, and then to take its effective guide, albeit with the objective difficulties that the diffusion of the Internet and new technologies present (Publications.parliament.UK. 2020).

The history of music recorded in the last two decades has truly undergone epochal transformations: from physical to digital first, from downloads to streaming then and finally from ownership to free access. But the real challenge is the transition from long decline to growth.

Growth in social media

Dismantling the results of the Global Music Report, the mass adoption of streaming services such as Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music, both in consolidated and emerging markets, was, as expected, the main factor behind the sustained recovery of the sector First Napster, the software containing the invention of "file sharing" (the sharing and exchange of music between users), then Kazaa and then eMule with the peer-to-peer system, up to Megaupload with the file-hosting , the phonographic market which until then presented itself as an oligopoly in the hands of five major industries (Majors or the "five sisters"): EMI, Warner, Universal, BMG and Sony, put in great difficulty. According to Sanchez (2018), the social media growth provides a platform to the customers to access different application for screaming the music videos as well as it would be effective for the music composers to promote their music across the international markets. The biggest effect was the possibility to use the music product for free thanks to the download of your favorite songs from the network thanks to the introduction of the mp3 files, the compression format of the music that made it possible to download music in a short time and with fair quality. The coup de grace came in mid-2003 with the opening of I-Tunes which made it possible to legally purchase single songs at ridiculously low prices, without necessarily having to buy an entire album, with enormous economic damage to the record companies. The majors, with their lobbying power, have tried to convince governments that the problem was piracy and have managed, with difficulty and after long legal disputes never really ended, to contain the phenomenon, however the crisis has forced them before to push the live activity of the singers to the maximum and then adapt to the new world by joining the Spotify platform, a music service that offers streaming on demand of a selection of songs by various record companies and independent labels, launched in October 2008 (Cook and Wilkinson, 2019). At the end of 2016, according to IFPI, there were 112 million paid music subscribers worldwide, but if you add users of streaming services supported by advertising, the number rises to 212 million, with total revenues streams that rise 60% year-on-year to just over $ 3.9 billion. Streaming now accounts for the majority (59 percent) of digital revenue, while the entire digital range (download and streaming) represents more than half of sales in as many as 25 markets, which is effective for the music producers and it further contributes in the economy positively

This was enough to offset a 20.5% drop in download sales (sales data was not provided) and the aforementioned 7.6% drop in physical revenue.

Revenues from performance rights also grew 7% to $ 2.2 billion and represent 14% of the market, with the United States, the United Kingdom and France in the top three. The global synchronization market, the process that links a musical composition with a moving image (a television program, a movie, an advertisement, a video game or any other work with a visual platform), also grew, rising by 2, 8% and maintaining its 2% share of all recorded music revenues. If you want to use a particular song for these media, you must in fact obtain authorization from a publisher / songwriter to obtain the "synchronization license" for a fee and then permission to use that composition in sync with the visual part without restrictions. Canadian rapper Drake has been named by IFPI as the best-selling record artist in the world in 2016, for the fourth time on top of the Global Chart, which rewards the best-selling artists in all physical and digital formats, including download and streaming . Beyoncé's Lemonade excelled in the IFPI Global Album List 2016 (based on physical and digital sales, but excluding streams), beating Adele's 25 - second - and Drake's Views in third place. Metallica with Hardwired ... To Self-Destruct and David Bowie with Blackstar complete the top five of the best-selling albums in the world (Laing, 2017).

The general optimism that the results of the report have led to remains the increasingly controversial and unsolved problem of the low royalty rates deriving from YouTube, the most popular music platform in the world. According to IFPI data, video streaming services uploaded by users operating under safe harbour legislation made rights holders $ 553 million in 2016, resulting from a global audience of over 900 million users. The disparity between this return and the $ 3.9 billion that rights holders received from streaming services in the same 12 months - despite streaming has a much lower user base of around 200 million people - is a serious problem, which must be addressed if the music industry intends to reach its maximum potential. Hereby, it is possible to utilise the media platform for better performance and promote the music videos and operate in the market to retain the customers for long run (Publications.parliament.UK. 2020).

Conclusions

If the traditional functions remain (those related to artistic creation and production), they will change and radically change the functions of: marketing, promotion and marketing. Historic record companies are already operating through different platforms with employees segmented by musical tastes. The professional profiles for online music today seem to be the following: Content editor, Copywriter, Blogger, Vlogger and above all Social media manager. It can be argued that, promotion actions on social media to the public are divided into 2 broad categories: those for already popular or very popular artists, which aim to maintain their share of the public or market. And emerging artists or Unknowns who have to look for the new ways, which is cheaper, because in the absence of a pre-existing promo budget, orienting more on blogs, on the use of customer profiles is effective to be reached with platforms or social media such as FaceBook, Instagram, twitter.

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Reference List

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Frith, S., Brennan, M., Cloonan, M. and Webster, E., 2016. The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume I: 1950-1967: From Dance Hall to the 100 Club. London: Routledge.

Frith, S., Brennan, M., Cloonan, M. and Webster, E., 2019. The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume II, 1968-1984: From Hyde Park to the Hacienda. London: Routledge.

Laing, D., 2017. The three Woodstocks and the live music scene. In Remembering Woodstock (pp. 1-17). London: Routledge.

Piazza, A., Phillips, D.J. and Castellucci, F., 2019. High-Status Affiliations and the Success of Entrants: New Bands and the Market for Live Music Performances, 2000-2012. Organization Science, Forthcoming.

Rozbicka, P. and Conroy, M., 2017. Live music and Brexit’s cliffhanger. Music Business Journal, 13(1), pp.8-11.

Webster, E., Brennan, M., Behr, A., Cloonan, M. and Ansell, J., 2018. Valuing live music: The UK live music census 2017 report.

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