Introduction to Marketing: Sony Music Entertainment Strategies Report

This report provides an introduction to marketing, focusing on the strategies employed by Sony Music Entertainment. It begins with an overview of the company, its current market position, and its existing marketing approaches, including advertising on social media, email marketing, and video marketing. The report then delves into innovative ideas to improve Sony Music's marketing, such as stream-friendly strategies, contest marketing, and the use of live streams. A competitive analysis with Warner Music Group is also included. Finally, the report offers recommendations to enhance Sony Music's marketing efforts, addressing challenges like piracy and suggesting strategies to increase revenue and market share, supported by financial data and industry insights.

Introduction to marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
Overview of organisation and its current marketing strategy................................................1
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................3
New and innovative ideas to improve marketing strategy and approaches............................3
Recommendations..................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
This assignment will provide introduction of marketing. The chapter will assess and
demonstrate about skills and talents needed in marketing which will be based upon its theories
and models. It will cover about working experience in Sony Music Entertainment. Also, the
current marketing strategy of cited firm will be described in this report. Further, there are various
marketing strategies which are followed by different organisations (Armstrong and et.al., 2015).
These strategies will be demonstrated in the following chapter. In addition, the impacts of new
and innovative ideas will be elaborated.
Task 1
Overview of organisation and its current marketing strategy
In this assignment, the marketing strategies of Sony Music Entertainment will be
discussed. It is a music company based in America. This is also abbreviated as SME. This entity
has owned by Sony and incorporated as Sony Music Holdings Inc. this enterprise is a well-
known name in among music companies and operates globally. Currently, its biggest competitor
is Warner Music Group.
Current marketing position: The current position of this entity is not so good as piracy took
place therefore, its sales was not up to the mark. In the year 2017, Sony Music had generated
about $166.12 million just from UK sales and $71.98 million from Row. In last 12 months the
cited firm employed 289 people for sales and distribution and hired 287 in 2016. However, its
market shares fall by 1% that is from 24% to 23%. Today, it is one of the biggest music
companies ahead of Warner Music and other entities. Even it stands as second largest music firm
after Universal. It also tends to associated with pops that are chart friendly. This entity is now
owned by Sony Corporation (Babin and Zikmund, 2015). It comprises some legendary and
famous artists like Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake and One Direction.
Marketing strategies: Marketing of any product is a thing that requires willingness of
experiment. It is important for the perspective of long term and calculation of return on
investment. If an organisation keeps applying same strategies, it will never work for a long run.
Instead, a company should think to bring new ideas to promote its business (Fill and Turnbull,
2016). There are various new approaches and techniques for marketing. Sony is also following
some of them which are given as follows:
1

 Advertising on social networking sites: It does not need any expert to advertise his or her
products. There are numerous social sites that are available for music marketing. Some of
them are Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Sony Music Entertainment is already a big
name among famous and well-known artists. Still, this company also need some new
marketing schemes. Advertising of new music albums on Facebook is a very new and
good idea (Fill and Turnbull, 2016). For this, company needs to be focus on goal settings,
daily budgets, and target audience. The cited firm is making schemes to promote its
newly launched albums and also old ones that used to be famous. Entity knows very well
about the audience who likes coming and new artists. So, it is taking advantage of it and
updating people about latest audio and video albums. This strategy is taking shape by
boosting posts, promoting the page of enterprise, sending audience to its websites, by
knowing about coming events, and through getting more views on videos. Email marketing: It is fundamentally essential to use this scheme for marketing strategy.
However, the cited firm has already been using it from past many years but marketing
through emails is still in trend. This scheme is consists of basically two approaches. One
is sending campaigns and other is getting as much email addresses as possible. Former is
to be sent on a regular basis and for latter, it can be achieved by receiving email
addresses from everywhere. Both are doing by Sony Music very well.
 Video marketing: In this age, it becomes essential for music companies like Sony to
make video presence in the form of uploading new videos of rising and famous artists
and singers. For this, company is creating acoustic covers for favourite songs of people,
uploading lyrical videos on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and other social networking
sites. By applying this approach, Sony has got huge popularity and had increased sales
and revenues. Currently, it is still working on this strategy to gain more profits and name
in other music organisations.
About Warner Music Group: It is a Multinational music entertainment group based on
America. This company now operates in UK as well as globally. It is abbreviated as WMG and
also work in two areas Recorded music and other is music publishing. Former segment indulges
in developing various new artists and it does their marketing, distribution of music made by such
rising musicians. It is a company that stands just behind of Sony Music Entertainment. This has
been grown in terms of generating revenues by 13.96% every year. The entity made its position
2

among top ten music companies till now. But it has reported to make 0.48% lower profitability
than its competitors.
This firm is getting recognition and profits by implementing different marketing
strategies. It is working in making famous its music albums and giving chance to musicians to
grow. The entity is also looking forward to bringing new ideas for further growth and market
shares. This firm is applying various new techniques and approaches to do marketing. One
among those is by organising different events and concerts. In this, WMG is arranging number
of concerts and bringing famous and well-known artists into them. So, it is easy to gain
recognition (Hair Jr and Lukas, 2014). This gives more popularity to company and hence it is
good for its marketing. Furthermore, by arranging various campaigns Warner Music Group is
becoming more famous for offering world class music albums as well as to giving platform to
new artists through these campaigns.
As both organisations are doing best to stand out in the competitive world, but still both
Sony and Warner are on the path to making new strategies for retaining their positions. In this
way, both music companies are getting more popular and generating revenues.
Task 2
New and innovative ideas to improve marketing strategy and approaches
For making new strategies a firm is needed to review about its current market position
and act accordingly. The position of any firm can be determined by assessing its revenues and
profits. As discussed above, Sony has been created huge profit but had decreased market shares
by 1%. On the other hand, Warner Music is being generating huge profits which is making its
position more strong (Iacobucci and et. al. 2015). It is because this firm provide equal chance to
newer music artists to grow. It also gives platform to rising singers and helping them to enhance
their career. At the same time this company organises big events and invites known celebrities to
perform. This way, its marketing scheme is getting new boost. As far as Sony Music is
concerned, it is also doing well. It is second best music entity in world. So, it is not easy to
maintain this position and keep on growing. Although, the cited firm is going to apply new
strategies, there are certain new ideas that can help to improve company's position further. Steam friendly strategy: Making presence globally is a very difficult task. However, both
WMG and SME are firms that are well positioned in music industry but this is a new
approach that both companies need to follow (Needham and Smith, 2015). The latter one
3

is on its way to test this scheme. This is a new strategy to release albums. It is helpful for
markets that are streaming centric. According to this technique, the companies could
abandon Short release windows to make long marketing cycle. By this, a single song can
be played in a loop and also whole album can be repeated and create a loop of songs.
This way, the marketing of these companies will gain pace and more audience will
connect to the cited firms. It will make listeners keep coming back to play and hear songs
and even whole albums. Contest marketing strategy: It is the technique by which a firm can gain more publicity.
This is used by various firms and these two companies SME and WMG should also
implement it. In this approach different contests can be organised such as photo, video
and submitting vote contests. The photo tests are great because these are easy to enter,
provide various sponsors (Sheth and Sisodia, 2015). The video test is a bit difficult to
enter but it gives desired results. This method of marketing is needed to be used by cited
firms. Through it, their new released videos and albums will get fast recognition among
fans and other people. Other traditional ideas that can be implemented by companies are
bringing sweepstakes. It is new but a general marketing idea to attract more audience. In
this approach, enterprises can organise various quiz or games and offer numerous gifts
and prizes so that more audience can connect to them and they can sell their albums and
single songs.
 Using live streams: It can be used for people to make them share their views and
experiences for particular artist or song. For this, Facebook live is very helpful to connect
with audiences. Through it, listeners put their review for any live show or concert by
accessing its page. This can create both positive and negative impact on other viewers. If
the rankings and word of mouth is in the favour of show then it will add more audience.
On the other hand, if word of mouth is more negative then people can disconnect with
show or any artist's album (Tomczak, Reinecke and Kuss, 2018). So, it depends all up to
the people how they rate the event. Besides having both consequences of this approach, it
is a technique which if work well, will create a huge audience and fan following and
therefore, they will more likely to buy corresponding album.
Further, both the companies Sony music and Warner music group can make modifications in
their current strategies. They can use social media marketing on a large scale. Because this a
4

platform, where most of the people connect to world. So, what else can be better than this idea
for marketing? The modifications that can be used in this context are to be more active and
updated on these social networking sites. Furthermore, cited firms need to establish an emotional
connection with listeners of albums and songs so that they will be more likely to purchase
collections of various artists (Totten and Cross, 2015). This can also be used to prevent piracy
which is illegal and not good to gain more profits and revenues for organisations.
Recommendations
llustration 1: Turnover in last years
Source: Sony Music Entertainment UK LTD Generated $198 M In
Revenue Over Last Financial Year. 2017
In the above graph, it can be easily seen that Sony Music Entertainment had generated
less revenues in 2016 as compared to 2015. Also, the profits were less than previous financial
year. Since it is a huge organisation which publishes music albums and singles of different
artists. This entity operates globally and making its name since it has been established. There is a
big hurdle in the success of this international firm and that is piracy (Sony Music Entertainment
UK LTD Generated $198 M In Revenue Over Last Financial Year. 2017). Today, people listen
and view pirated albums as they are available free of cost and take no time to get. So the cited
firm need to focus on this obstacle and try to remove it by making people aware about the act
5

which is unlawful. Because it is the main reason for decreased sales of company. Furthermore,
Sony has been reached to a place in terms of fame and market shares where it does not have to
put much efforts to reach at the top level. Still, it is recommended for the enterprise to work
towards implementing new methods of marketing so that it can retain its position and also cross
the revenues of top music company which is Universal Music. In addition, it is also suggested to
the firm to be in contact with public through various available mediums to retain its position.
Illustration 2: Revenues of last years
Source: Warner Bets Big On International Expansion – But Is It Paying Off?
2017
The above graph is about sales revenues of Warner Music Group. It can be easily seen
that this entity has increased its revenues and profits in the last years. This should continue with
its current marketing strategies to reach at the top level.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be articulated that organisations like SME and WMG have
potential to grow further. They are already in top listed music entities. To retain their current
position, both should apply various old and new marketing approaches so that they can increase
their competitive advantage in near future.
6

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Armstrong, G. and et. al., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Babin, B.J. and Zikmund, W.G., 2015. Exploring marketing research. Cengage Learning.
Fill, C. and Turnbull, S., 2016. Marketing Communications. Pearson Higher Ed.
Fill, C. and Turnbull, S.L., 2016. Marketing communications: brands, experiences and
participation. Pearson.
Hair Jr, J.F. and Lukas, B., 2014. Marketing research (Vol. 2). McGraw-Hill Education
Australia.
Iacobucci, D. and et. al., 2015. Three Essential Analytical Techniques for the Behavioral
Marketing Researcher: Median Splits, Mean-Centering, and Mediation
Analysis. Foundations and Trends® in Marketing. 9(2). pp.83-174.
Needham, C. and Smith, G., 2015. Introduction: Political Marketing. Journal of Political
Marketing, pp.1-6.
Sheth, J.N. and Sisodia, R.S., 2015. Does marketing need reform?: Fresh perspectives on the
future. Routledge.
Tomczak, T., Reinecke, S. and Kuss, A., 2018. Introduction. In Strategic Marketing (pp. 1-18).
Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Totten, J.W. and Cross, J.N., 2015. Students’ Perceptions of the Importance of the Introduction
to Marketing Course & Topics in Meeting Their Career Objectives. In Proceedings of the
1991 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 193-197). Springer,
Cham.
Online
Sony Music Entertainment UK LTD Generated $198 M In Revenue Over Last Financial Year.
2017. Available through <https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/sony-music-uk-
generated-198m-revenue-last-financial-year/>
Warner Bets Big On International Expansion – But Is It Paying Off? 2017. [Online]. Available
Through <https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/warner-bets-big-on-international-
expansion-but-is-it-paying-off/>
7