festival increases as Global Gathering attract more and more visitors. In 2001 Global Gathering saw a total of 25,119 visitors compared to the 51,038 that attended in the summer of 09.
Global gathering is a perfect example for where branding is used as a window of opportunity for other companies that are not necessarily linked to music to get
involved with the music industry. Last summer (2009), Global Gathering co-branded with fast food chain Dominoes Pizza in a deal which allowed Dominoes to set up a mobile store, which took a substantial gross intake of £55,000 over the two day festival. Other key media partnerships and synergies made alongside Global Gathering include; MTV, ITV2, Channel 4 and Vodafone. In each case, there was a documentary or short feature programme created by the companies’, this not only provides them with new programming but benefits the Global Gathering brand as it provides them with extra promotion. The two day festival also has relationships with several radio stations such as; Whilst XFM, BBC Radio 1, Capital, Galaxy, Bauer and Gaydar which all provide national radio broadcast coverage.
Escape Into the Park
Escape Into the Park, like Global Gathering, is a dance music festival but is held exclusively in Swansea, Wales. The festival has been running since 2001 with the first event selling out at 10,000. Now in 2009 the capacity has been increased to 25,000 with last summer’s event attracting over 20,000 people.
Escape has a key media partnership with radio broadcaster Kiss 105, in a deal which sees Kiss provide promotion of the event online through their website, micro-sites and mail outs. Not only does this synergetic relationship benefit both companies as they work together to advertise both brands, but Kiss as an established radio station gives the event more credibility and visa versa.
Air Nightclub
Air, situated in a former warehouse in Birmingham is considered as Angel Music Groups worldwide flagship venue. Since its opening in 2000, Air has set the bench mark as the Midlands’ and possibly the UK’s most popular electronic dance music nightclub. The 1,650 capacity venue includes; three floors which host some of the best dance DJ’s in Europe as well as catering for corporate events and private bookings. Air is more popularly known as the home to one of the best electronic dance brands ‘Godskitchen’ which we will briefly talk about later on.
The ownership of Air nightclub through vertical integration has significant benefits and a great impact on the company and its position in the industry. The more obvious benefits that firstly come to mind involve costs. Owning the venue means that they can greatly reduce costs when producing events such as the popular brand Godskitchen at Air, thus also greatly increasing profit. The other benefit that comes to mind involves the importance of vertical integration in relation to corporate strategy issues. Vertical integration can greatly reduce uncertainties, therefore making further investment a more attractive decision in hopes to increase profits and growth. The main reason for this is because Angel Music Group has now obtained greater control over the whole production chain and improved chances of monopolising the market.
‘Air’ nightclub is also sponsored by Bacardi, VK and Corona Extra, in a deal which sees Angel Music Group gain economic capital and these drink brands the chance to profile their brand at ‘Air’ venues. It also provides them the opportunity
to be associated with the world biggest dance brand. Not only does this financially benefit Angel Music Group but brands such as Bacardi provide interesting features that enhance events and they provide great promotion as they push events through their networks.
Godskitchen
Godskitchen is a dance music night that debuted in the mid 90s at a club called ‘The Junction’ in Cambridge. Just like dance music’s humble beginnings, the night started off small, now the event has transformed into an international clubbing super power. Events have been held all over the globe in countries such as, Belarus, Poland, South Africa, Russia, Spain and many more. Since Cambridge and as the brand started to grow, Angel Music Group were quick to realise that they needed to constantly re-locate to venues all over the UK that could hold a larger audiences. It wasn’t long when the brand moved to the dance capital of the world, Ibiza, where it was a huge success. It was in the year 2000 when Godskitchen needed its own venue, named Air which set the record capacity at any single Godskitchen event at 20,000. The huge success of the
brand in the UK saw it move to countries across the globe as previously mentioned.
Not only has Angel Music Group taken its dance music brand to the heights of success within events, but has taken the brand in other directions with respect to record deals with major labels such as Sony (formerly known as Sony BMG) and Virgin. Several albums have been produced under the Godskitchen brand name with sales totalling over 1 million CD’s.
Angel Music Group Structure
As Angel Music group is a fairly large company that employ a great deal of staff, the organisation splits its staff up into departments that work with different segments within the organisation. Currently there are six departments within the organisation that work together in order to sustain the company’s progress. Each department within the organisation have a head and then subordinates who oversee everyone. The departments are as follows:
The admin staff at Angel Music Group facilitate for all the other departments within the organisation. Although the first perception of the organisation questions its importance, they carry out essential tasks such as; applying for visas, producing itineraries for artists, filling out and organising contracts as well as other paperwork related tasks.
The design department are more involved with the creative side of the organisation. The staff in this department design and organise the production
of all the promotional material used by Angel Music Group such as; flyers, posters, network cards, magazine ads, billboards, merchandising, brand images, websites, tickets and many more.
The finance department handle all fiscal activities involved with the organisation. This is an imperative role within the organisation as the existence and progress of the company relies on good financial management skills. The department’s roles include; identifying and sourcing funds, allocation of funds, controlling the utilisation of funds and tax payments.
The production department plan and implement all the events put on by Angel Music Group. A lot of teamwork, organisation and consideration are gone into the production of the events. The roles that the team have to carry out include; Hiring generators, sound, lighting, managing stages and overseeing events on the night.
The promotion department are responsible for promoting all the events put on by Angel Music Group as well as promoting the organisations brands in general. Good promotion would lead to successful events and thus a healthy organisation. Promotional responsibilities include; distributing flyers and posters, promoting events on websites such as ‘Facebook’ and finally creating press releases.
The talent bookers have a simple yet challenging role. They are responsible for booking artists and organising an effective line-up for the specified event.
A good talent booker would keep the budget in mind and posses good negotiating and organisation skills.
The process and production for most events and festivals held by Angel Music Group follow a standard guideline. Firstly, the talent bookers organise a line-up and book the artists for a specified date. All information is then passed on to the Design department where they create and design all promotional material in line with artist requirements. All the printed matter is now in the hands of the promotions department in which they have to distribute/promote the material to the best of their ability whilst working all available networks. The financial and admin department then work together to pay all deposits as well as put together contracts and carry out all other admin related work. Its now finally up to the production department to deliver the event and manage it on the night.
Marketing/Promotion Strategy
Along with the promotional material created and distributed by the design and promotions department, Angel Music Group’s promotion and marketing strategy involves a lot of press and other forms of media coverage. Examples from past events saw Angel Music Group release numerous press releases with companies such as; The Sun, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mirror, Cosmopolitan and DJ Magazine. Many of these press releases include artist interviews and competitions that run along side with them. Angel Music Group is always on the look out for clever PR stunts, we have seen Angel Music Group in the past have the audacity to project adverts onto the houses of parliament and the Battersea power station in London. They also gained coverage on The Sun, when they told them that Prince William had his own royal box as he wanted to watch his favourite band ‘Prodigy’, all lies of course!
Global Gathering projection on Battersea power station.
Aims for the Future
Angel Music Group plan to progress into the future by expanding into more territories and dominating the international market. This would mean staging more large events on a global scale and possibly the creation of new brands and new brand partnerships. The organisation is particularly interested in the development of the ‘Godskitchen’ ‘Boombox’ concept. The ‘Boombox’ is a unique
structure designed by a Parisian based design collective that contains custom projection technology, hidden lighting and visual effects. It’s a huge design at 16m wide, 8m high and 6m deep. The ‘Boombox’ creates an aesthetically pleasing show and emphasises the importance of atmosphere and lighting as much as the music itself. Angel Music Group and the team of designers are constantly working together to keep the ‘Boombox’ fresh, new and exciting. (Watch clip at )
Critique
Angel Music Group are constantly expanding into international markets and as briefly mentioned before aim to move into new territories in order to dominate their market. The desire to increase their market share is not just related to economic growth but also represents broader intentions. Companies with a high share in a particular market tend to attract more investment and provide an indication of the skills and quality of the staff within the organisation (Negus, 1999). This further benefits the organisation as this increases their credibility and thus improves their chances of creating new synergies and partnerships.
The horizontal integration of Angel Music Group and the vertical integration of Air Nightclub also increase market share and concentration. However, Burnett explains that,
There is general concern that levels of ownership and market concentration that would be tolerable in other economic fields may be undesirable in the media industry. Those against media concentration stress the value of cultural aspects over market economies (1996, p. 13).
It seems that Angel Music Group’s obsession with market share is greatly increasing their economic capital but at the risk of loosing their cultural capital. Furthermore, ‘traditional thresholds for concern that concentration is leading to oligopolistic or monopolistic activities that will have an adverse effect on the marketplace’ (Burnett, 1996, p. 13).
The growth of the organisation in its market place also goes hand in hand with the growth of the company structure and staffing. Production and promotion director Damian Eston believes that there are possibly too many departments within the organisation and that they don’t require as much staff. Although Eston may feel this way, I believe that there is definite need for these departments if not more departments and staff in the future. Angel Music Group has a wide range of interests and a potential way to solve this problem would be to implement portfolio management as used by many record labels today. ‘Portfolio management provides a way of managing the company’s diverse range of interests, as each unit can be assesses according to its performance and level of investment required’ (Negus, 1999, p. 48). This way of managing Angel Music Group’s departments is commonly seen as an approach with ‘tight financial control but loose regulation of day-to-day working’ (Negus, 1999, p. 50). The only downside for Angel Music Group here would be that the organisation would not
be seen as a unified business, which is key as each department need to constantly communicate with each other.
The synergies created by Angel Music Group through Mama Group, Air nightclub and festivals such as Global Gathering play a key part in the progress of the company. Sanchez-Tabernero explains that,
the synergetic effect means that the profit of a company increases as a result of certain ‘benefits’ or advantages resulting from the simultaneous ownership of various media. Managers may find that certain launches of ‘products’ or acquisitions are more successful and profitable; moreover, they may achieve certain synergies in terms of advertising, distribution, financing, cross promotion and management, and may therefore increase profitability of each separate medium’ (1993, p.163).
I believe this is true for Angel Music Group as ‘Air’ nightclub provides them with a venue in the UK where they can hold events such as ‘Godskitchen’ with lower costs thus increasing profits.
The success of events held by Angel Music Group is based on promotion. Promotion is ‘an attempt to ‘articulate’ the relationship between the identity of the artist and the lived experience of consumers’ (Negus, 1992). In Angel Music Group’s case it is as much of an attempt to ‘articulate’ the relationship between the identities of the organisations brands as the identity of the artists associated to those brands. As promotion is achieved through ideas of market segmentation many would think that as an organisation that associates itself with dance music, the market would be targeted through media products such as; club DJ’s, white labels, specialist radio and magazines. This holds true for Angel Music Group but we also see the organisations brands targeting their market through radio
stations such as; BBC Radio 1, Kiss and many other ‘commercial’ avenues, which is unusual for the dance music genre.
Godskitchen has been a very successful brand for Angel music Group as they have not only managed to break into the international market with dance events, but have gained great economic capital from numerous compilation albums released under deals with Sony and Virgin.
There are a number of commercial reasons why such collections of material are profitable. Firstly, the costs of recording the tracks have already been undertaken when the tracks were released as singles. Secondly, consumers get 10 or 12 tracks on a CD compilation album for cheaper than buying singles. Thirdly, retail chains are more likely to stock compilation albums for a less specialist audience (Hesmondhalgh, 1998, p. 242).
Most tracks on a compilation are licensed with independents but in this case as Angel Music Group are involved with Sony and Virgin they do not need to worry about the fact that ‘major labels command a much higher royalty rate than independents’ (Hesmondhalgh, 1998, p. 242). However, there is a great downside in releasing such compilation albums as Straw (1993) explains, the irony is that the compilation album is a commodity which is looked down upon in the dance world, because of the high prestige attached to the obscurity within such subcultures. Such compilations have the least credibility amongst dance crowds, whereas ‘white labels’ have in the past has the highest (Thornton, 1994, p. 179). This can lead to a loss in cultural capital which will affect the company in the future.
It constantly seems like Angel Music Group are abandoning the cultural aspects for economic capital. However, on a more local scale this is balanced out as
Angel Music Group holds many smaller scale events on a weekly basis outside of their ‘Godskitchen’ and ‘Global Gathering’ brands. All of these events are carried out not only in ‘Air’ nightclub but other venues such as the ‘Custard Factory’ and the ‘Rainbow’, which are all situated in the cultural sector of Birmingham. This gives the company more credibility on a local scale as they do not hold events in ‘commercial’ clubs situated in the city centre.
Conclusion
It’s clear to see that Angel Music Group is a successful company that is constantly looking to expand. However, this may have adverse effects on the market and on their cultural capital as I described previously. There is a compromise you have to make between economic capital and cultural capital as it seems the gain in one leads to the fall in the other and visa versa. Although Angel Music Group and their brands have managed to retain their cultural credibility on a local scale, it seems as if their drive to constantly expand on an international scale is seeing them take their brands and dance music as a whole into the mainstream. However, dance music fans may not completely look at this in a bad light as Angel Music Group are not taking dance music and physically ‘commercialising’ it as some major record companies would do, but instead taking the same ‘underground’ dance music and bringing it to audiences in the market all over the world thus still retaining some sense of credibility.
Bibliography
Burnett, R. (1996) The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry. London, Routledge.
Hesmondhalgh, D. (1998) The British Dance Music Industry: A Case Study of Independent Cultural Production. The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 234-251.
Musicweek. (2008) Angel Music Group comes to Mama [online]. http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?storycode=1033948.
Negus, K. (1992) Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. London, Arnold.
Negus, K. (1999) Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. London, Routledge.
Sanchez-Tabernero, A. (1993) Media Concentration in Europe. Manchester: The European Institute for the Media.
Straw, W. (1993) The Booth, the Floor and the Wall: Dance Music and the Fear of Falling. Public, no.8, pp. 169-183.
Thornton, S. (1994) Moral Panic, the Media and British Rave Culture, in A. Ross and T.Rose (eds). Microphone Friends. New York, Routledge.