Is Sponsorship the answer for Artists?
November 5, 2009
Sponsorship is nothing new, we have always heard of major sponsorship deals for tours from your big drinks companies and other industries. Clothing designers have sponsored artists and even for new and up and coming acts it is quite simple to obtain free clothes from certain labels. It’s a simple process we pay you to advertise our product to as many people as possible, or we like your brand aligning our product with your brand gives us kudos in the market, but currently sponsors have realised artists are more and more realising the strength of their brand and offering more deals for artists whether they are on tour or not.
Companies such as Doritos are getting more involved with artists on a personal basis by sponsoring all of the artist activities and many music industry professionals a fearing there will become a day when you will have “Oasis brought to you by Apple” scenarios.
Is this such a bad thing? Many of you independent artist would jump at the opportunity to have £100,000 to fund your music, and how different is being brought to the market by Pepsi from being brought to you by Sony or Warner Bros. Is it just the actual product that is offering the sponsorship. I’m sure most hip hop artists wouldn’t mind being brought to the market by Mercedes or De Beers diamonds because it suits their image (well most artists anyway).
So is this a case of the major record companies bleating because they are losing control of their market or is there a scary undertone that artists will start to produce music for corporations first and not spend time being truly original. When you think about it we could soon have a time where music is just a bi-product to sell cars, food, clothing, some say that it is already.
Through developments online and more companies such as WE7 streaming music people may not have to pay for their music in future so artists will look to other revenue streams to support their development, and with recording companies suffering as they say they are, less artists will be signed so we may find creativity being ignored for the sake of chasing the money. In my opinion that is happening already.
I think times are changing an people are looking for new business models for the music industry as the current one is well out of date I’m not sure this is the answer but I’ll leave you to form your own opinions on this subject.
