Analyzing Kanye West's Disruptive Impact on the Music Industry Project

This project analyzes Kanye West's impact on the music industry, examining his innovative approaches and disruptive strategies. It explores how technology and creative processes have changed the industry, focusing on Kanye West's unique methods like publishing albums on Tidal and incorporating soulful samples. The project delves into the business environment, considering political, social, cultural, and economic factors, and identifies Kanye West's primary audience. It assesses the impact of audience preferences on creative media products and their responses to industry disruptions. Furthermore, the project outlines the hard and soft skills required by disruptors, the impact of disruption on industry skills, and the skills the author possesses or needs to develop to succeed. The conclusion emphasizes the need for musicians to continuously improve their skills in a rapidly evolving industry, referencing supporting literature and online resources.

Game-Changer in the Music Industry
project

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Technology or process, creators are using leading to change in the industry..................................1
Business environment conditions in music industry........................................................................1
Audience of Kayne West.................................................................................................................2
Audience impacts on the production of the creative media products..............................................2
Audience response to disruption in the music industry...................................................................2
Hard skills required by disruptors....................................................................................................3
Soft skills required by disruptor.......................................................................................................3
Impact the disruption is having on the skills required to succeed in the industry...........................4
What skills you currently have and what you will need to develop to be a success in the industry
at the time?.......................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Technology advancement is one of thing that bring huge changes in the industries across
globe. Music industry is one of them where musicians are using new technology to make heart
touching music. In the current report detail analysis of Kayne West innovative efforts is made in
respect to development of music. Business environment analysis is also done and along with this
detailed discussion carried out on soft skills and hard skills that are required to prepare music in
better way. Thus, current research work covers broad aspects of music industry.
Technology or process, creators are using leading to change in the industry
Kayne West is one of the most popular musicians in America. Mentioned celebrity is rapper,
song writer, fashion designer and film director etc. Kayne West always think out of box and this
is the reason behind changes that he brings to music industry. Usually, whenever musician create
any album it publishes same on varied platforms like Spotify, Amazon, Apple music, I tune and
You Tube etc (Kerry., 2018). Musicians also make available physical copies of their albums in
the market. Here, Kayne West do different and publish his album only on Tidal which he co-
owns with multiple music artists. Through this step he makes an effort to stop piracy of its
albums. Apart from this, mentioned celebrity use Hip Hop music in its album “The Blueprint”.
To make album different he use soulful samples and incorporate same in album. Such kind of
effort dislodged or reduce use of keyboard driven production style from Hip Hop music. This
revive use of soulful samples in production of Hip Hop music which definitely bring change in
the industry.
Business environment conditions in music industry Political environment: Political environment does not have much influence on music
industry. However, musicians like Kayne West support President Donald trump and in
respect to this also prepare music “This is America” (Gebesmair, 2017). So, it can be said
that musicians express their opinion on political issues but this have marginal or no
impact on music industry.
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 Social environment: Social environment in music industry is congenial and there is no
discrimination between black and white people. There may be few cases but broadly
social environment is favourable for music industry of USA. Cultural environment: On this front also, there is no problem as people of different
cultures listen all musician’s music irrespective of their religion, gender and colour etc.
 Economic environment: There are multiple income generation options that are available
to musicians (Leonard, 2017). Apps like Spotify buy music from the musicians and pay
higher amount to them. Hence, it can be said that economic environment is favourable for
the musicians.
Audience of Kayne West
Youngsters and mostly Christians are the audience of the Kayne West. This is because he
prepares songs on faith and Christianity and always try something innovative which is mostly
welcome by youngsters. Hence, mentioned group of people are main audience of Kayne West.
Audience impacts on the production of the creative media products
Audience have very high impact on the production of the creative media products. This is
because musician or any artist have to prepare work according to audience preferences. As
mentioned above that youngsters are the major audience of the Kayne West and they always
prefer some different music. Kayne West understand its audience preference and due to this
reason bring changes in Hip Hop music of its album “The Blueprint”. Those who does not
prepare creative media products at discretion of end customer preferences does not gain much
popularity and attention from people. Hence, it can be deduced that audience preferences and
their likes as well as dislikes have very high impact on the creative media products.
Audience response to disruption in the music industry
Audience always welcome disruption the music industry because it is the disruption that
lead to origination of something new in any industry specially in music segment. Kayne West is
one of the music artist that believes in innovating music (Peltoniemi, 2015). His efforts are
appreciated by people and this is evidence from varied facts. Kayne West closed its Twitter
account in April 13 and re-join same platform on May 2017 and in just four days his fans
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increased to 10 million. This is the disruption that caused by Kayne West which lead to such
huge fan following on Twitter in just few days on Twitter. This proved that audience have
positive response to disruption that is observed in the music industry
Hard skills required by disruptors
There are number of hard skills that are required by disruptors like fast speed to perform
task knowledge of computer programming etc. In context of musicians there are different set of
hard skills that they required to perform better on the work. Disruptors in the music industry
require number of hard skills which are given below. Participation in recording sessions: Disruptors need to participate multiple times in
recording session so that they can identify which rhythm working best for the music and
choose best one for publish (O’Dair and Beaven, 2017). Preparation for auditions: Disruptor need to do very high level of preparations and need
to prepare multiple formats for single song so that something different can be delivered to
the music director during auditions.
 Singing tone: Disruptor must be able to change singing tone suddenly according to
requirement of music. This is one of the most required skills from side of disruptor
musician. Knowledge of instrumentation: Disruptor musician must have strong knowledge of the
varied traditional and non-traditional instruments so that by combining them best music
can be developed according to emotions that are hidden in the song.
Soft skills required by disruptor
There are number of soft skills that are required by the disruptors in the music industry.
Some of soft skills are given below. Communication skills: Musicians must have good communication skills so that it can
comprehend his colleagues about innovation that it intends to bring in the music
(Naveed,Watanabe and Neittaanmäki, 2017).
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 Motivation skills: Musician must have strong motivation skills so that whenever it
intends to try something new received sufficient support from side of other music
composers. Thus, it can be said that it is must have skills. Conflict management skills: Many times, it happens that musicians have different
opinions in respect to innovation that need to be made in the music. In such kind of
situation musician must have conflict management skills so that group solidarity can be
maintained in the music compose team.
Impact the disruption is having on the skills required to succeed in the
industry
There is very close relationship between disruption and skills required to get success in the
industry. This is because if there will be disruption in the industry then in that case there will be
few people that will have popularity in the industry. Thus, if other musicians will not give
competitive performance then in that case their career growth rate can be reduced which will
lead to decline in popularity and income (Mauch and et.al., 2015). Hence, when disruption
happened in music industry it become very important for the musicians to upgrade their skills so
that they can stay in competition and maintain or upgrade their current positions in comparison
to rivals. In the environment when disruption is common musicians have to do very hard work to
improve their performance. Thus, it can be deduced that if disruption will further happen in the
music industry then in that case skills development requirement will also increase at rapid pace.
What skills you currently have and what you will need to develop to be a
success in the industry at the time?
In order to become successful in the music industry there are number of skills that are required.
Some of the skills that I have are given below. Communication skills: One of the skill that have huge demand in today era is
communication skills. I have strong communication skills and is able to communicate my
ideas in better way to the colleagues. Preparing combination of instruments to prepare music: I also have expertise in
developing combination of instruments to develop good music. Possess strong knowledge
of traditional and non-traditional instruments which lead to generation of good music for
songs (Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills: What's the Difference?., 2019).
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Some of skills that need to be developed within me to become successful in the industry are as
follows. Practicing capacity: My music practice capacity is moderate and in order to become
successful in the industry I need to enhance my practice capacity so that in short time
period I can make experiments and prepare final music. Research skills: I need to develop my research skills in order to gather more and more
information about expectations in respect to quality that audience have from musicians.
With development of this skills I will be able to develop music that likely to be get higher
attention from audience.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of above discussion, it is concluded that music industry become disruptive as
some of artists are making innovation in their music’s which is creating challenge for musicians
who regularly use same approach to prepare music. It is also concluded that there are number of
hard and soft skills which are required to prepare music in better way. Hence, musicians need to
improve their skills regularly.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Gebesmair, A., 2017. Global repertoires: Popular music within and beyond the transnational
music industry. Routledge.
Leonard, M., 2017. Gender in the music industry: Rock, discourse and girl power. Routledge.
Mauch, M and et.al., 2015. The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010. Royal Society
open science. 2(5). p.150081.
Naveed, K., Watanabe, C. and Neittaanmäki, P., 2017. Co-evolution between streaming and live
music leads a way to the sustainable growth of music industry–Lessons from the US
experiences. Technology in Society. 50. pp.1-19.
O’Dair, M. and Beaven, Z., 2017. The networked record industry: How blockchain technology
could transform the record industry. Strategic Change. 26(5). pp.471-480.
Peltoniemi, M., 2015. Cultural industries: Product–market characteristics, management
challenges and industry dynamics. International journal of management reviews. 17(1).
pp.41-68.
Online
Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills: What's the Difference?., 2019. [Online]. Available through:<
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/hard-skills-vs-soft-skills-2063780>.
Kerry., F., 2018. [Online]. There’s a momentum to it’: The Kanye West guide to
social media. Available through:< https://digiday.com/marketing/theres-momentum-
kanye-west-guide-social-media/>.
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