Creativity and Talent: A Comparison of the UK and USA Music Industry

This essay examines the contrasting roles of creativity and talent within the music industries of the United Kingdom and the United States. It explores how creativity, defined as the use of original ideas, and talent, seen as an innate ability, influence success in these markets. The essay analyzes the UK's emphasis on creative musical aspects, including its historical background of talented musicians, its role as a 'global taste-maker,' and the challenges posed by copyright issues and the internet. In contrast, it highlights the US music industry's focus on talent, emphasizing stage performance and the impact of digital innovation, such as streaming services. The study references key artists, producers, and industry trends to illustrate the distinct dynamics of each market, ultimately concluding that while both are essential, the US places a higher degree of concentration on talent, while UK leverages creativity more. The essay also considers the impact of corporate sponsorship and technology on the development of musicians and the industry's overall evolution.

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CREATIVITY VS TALENT WITHIN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY UK AND USA

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Introduction
The music industry has recently termed as one of the largest creative industry globally
consisting of individuals and companies earning money through the creation of new songs and
selling of video and audio recording, shows, live concerts and compositions. According to
Stobart (2010 p.27-56), the music industry has evolved on large scale since nineteen century
when the leading product was printed sheet. The society’s technological progression has been
experienced in the twentieth century with more creativity and innovation emerging and more
talents introduced in the industry every day. Furthermore, through creativity and talent, the music
industry has grown to be a powerful industry consumed by masses and generating high revenues
to UK and US. Therefore, the study seeks to examine the literature review on creativity versus
talent within UK and USA music industries.
Creativity VS Talent within UK and USA music industry
According to Glăveanu (2011 p.48), creativity refers to the use of original ideas or
imagination to create something. Currently, creativity has become a dominant idea of
contemporary culture because of self-expression and aesthetic notions of subjectivity. Diverse
industries such as the music industry have used creativity as a way of providing better services to
audiences in order to survive rapid competitions. On another hand, Tansley (2011 p.267) defined
talent as a gift or competence component possessed by someone to do a particular job or task at a
certain level. In the music industry, talent has been a matter of aptitude but not instinct with
some musicians born with greater aptitude than others have. In addition, some musical talents
also have developed skills related to musical instrument faster than others do and therefore the
have ended up rising to higher stages of advancement.

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In UK music industry, creativity has been termed as “a global taste-maker” with
Companies and individuals from the nation coming up with musical acts that have consistently
attracted global perspective. Research conducted by Frith, Brennan, Cloonan and Webster (2010
p 1-30) clears shows that UK music industry is dominated with creative musical aspects with the
country having bands that play musical instruments with a lot of creativity. In addition, further
research conducted by Fintoni and McLauchlan (2018 p.163) has also shown that Creativity has
led to the UK originating music genre to dubstep and grime from punk and still the nation
continues to innovate new strategies to use in order to distribute and market music. Technology
space and the UK being a leader of the digital revolution has facilitated to high creativeness with
more than 70 downloading, streaming and cloud base services revolutionizing festival businesses
and concerts.
UK music creativity has been represented by UK’s commercial music industry ranging
from, composers, songwriters, musicians, artists, record labels, managers, studio producers and
publishers. According to Savage (2019 p.1), in 2016, three of the five biggest-selling artist came
from the UK as an indication that creativeness and skills of nurturing talents are high. In
addition, producers have proven to have a high degree of creativity while editing and producing
songs. The growth of live music has experienced high demand during the summer. In 2011
music week and the bubble burst, the house of publication of UK music industry showed
corporate sponsorship had made huge profits as compared to large music festivals. Despite
creativity being a successful factor in UK music market, copyrights issues and internet has
remained to be a great challenge diminishing creativity of musicians. Research carried out by
Parry, Bustinza and Vendrell-Herrero( 2012 p.332) clearly have shown that ever since music rise
on the internet, UK has experienced low revenues and increased revenues.

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The UK has had a historical background of talents who have dominated the music
industry both local and international. Some talents such as Cold Play, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Pink
Floyd and Elton John have proven to have supernatural talents with the artist having excellent
stage performance skills that have attracted masses. During 2017, UK based artist Adele through
her passion, talent and creativity in composing music saw the song “hello” won the Grammy
song of the year (McIntyre, 2019). Despite the song involving different creativities from
producers and songwriters, it is through Adele’s talent in vocals that awarded her. In addition,
the award came shortly after an excellent live performance that proved Adele’s skills and talent
was superb. Therefore, despite the UK having some talented musicians like Adele, creativity still
remains to be the key factor in the industry with Music in the UK not sustaining itself either live
or recorded when it comes to public sales because it requires creativity of corporate sponsorship.
The music industry in the US has acted as a motivator of information with different
artists and producers employing different information resources to improve their creativity. The
producers and sponsorship have been so creative on the marketing of the music to consumers. Cd
baby.com has enjoyed great success up to date because of its creativity in music distribution
scheme that has allowed musicians to sell CDs at their desired prices. In addition, there is a
current roster of over 350,000 artists who have received payment worthy millions of dollars for
their own creative work (Nguyen, 2018). Unlike talent that requires an artist to have unique
personality traits in US music industry, creativity requires information and in most of the times is
associated with information seeking preference of individuals. For example, in US music
industry, a musician refusing to use online musical information resources impacts his or her
creative outcome that is related on music performance of pre-composed, music scores and
recordings, mental representation of music and written analysis. Creativity and innovation are

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very high in the US music industry. The innovation of streaming sites like apple music and
Spotify was associated with US$7.8 billion in 2016 digital revenue accounting for fifty percent
of total revenue (Morris and Powers, 2015). In addition, many artists have used the technology
opportunities in the US as the majority of young entrepreneurial artists are finding ways
improved ways of monetizing engagement through the creation of websites and live
performance. Currently, the creativity in technical innovations has seen some US artist started
promoting their talents by using virtual reality (VR) to stream live concerns to their audiences
with disabilities or in remote areas. The UK’s melody company has set deals with right holders
while Wave VR Company has concentrated on music-experiences on social media in order to
identify and boost talents of upcoming artists. Therefore, utilization and great use of technology
in the US has enabled exposure to musical information that had contributed to the musical
creation of creative musical development and outcomes.
The United States is widely recognized for producing talented musicians. Over the last
decades, big stage names from United States have dominated the music industry. For example,
Michael Jackson, Drake, Rihanna, lady gaga, Lil Wayne and Chris Brown have experienced
success in the US music industry because of their talents in vocal and stage performances.
Despite the industry being overcrowded, the US music industry is all about talent . The stage
performance plays a significant role towards one career. From the talent and creativity of
songwriters to musician, performances in US industry remains the key success of the artists.
Once an artist steps on the stage for the first time, it is through his or her performance talent that
determines whether audiences are impressed with the vocals. Recently, the US music industry
has experienced rapid growth and emerged as a leading nation in terms of nurturing talents.

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Therefore, it can be concluded that the US has a high degree of concentration in talents as
compared to creativity.
Conclusion
Creativity and talent have been a key factor to why the music industry within UK and US has
evolved rapidly. Many musicians have talents but they have ended up being frustrated and some
become unsuccessful in the industry. Some musicians are talented in the performance of music
during festivals and live shows but due to lack of creativity in composing songs, they end up
attracting less attention of their audiences. Corporate sponsorship has highly facilitated to
creativity in the industry as they nature talents of creative artist who need support. Despite some
talented upcoming musicians lacking funds of recording their own songs, the corporate
sponsorship has been listening to their records, identifying talents and later on mentoring them.

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References
Fintoni, A. and McLauchlan, A., 2018. Assembling the dance: reggae sound system practices in
the United Kingdom and France. The Senses and Society, 13(2), pp.163-178.
Frith, S., Brennan, M., Cloonan, M. and Webster, E., 2010. " Analysing Live Music in the UK"
Findings One Year into a Three-Year Research Project. IASPM@ Journal, 1(1), pp.1-30.
Glăveanu, V.P., 2011. Creativity as cultural participation. Journal for the Theory of Social
Behaviour, 41(1), pp.48-67.
McIntyre, H. (2019). Grammys 2017: Adele Takes Home Song Of The Year For 'Hello'. [online]
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