Industrial context- Contemporary context

 Major players in this industry:

- Universal Music Group (USA based) — 29.85%

- Sony Music Entertainment (USA based) — 29.29%

- Warner Music Group (USA based) — 19.13%

- Independent labels — 12.11%

- EMI Group — 9.62%

How companies finance, distribute and exchange their products:

Distribution companies sign deals with record labels, which gives them the right to sell that label's products. The distributor takes a cut of income from each unit sold and then pays the label the remaining balance.

How do audiences access them? (consider recent developments in technology) 

Internet

Audiences can look up key titles on search engines such as Google, Bing etc. Fans can keep up with recent information about artists, as well as viewing their music videos posted on sites like YouTube, or Vimeo. Audiences can also access social media sites, via the internet and share links to their favourite music videos on these sites. Before the internet it was much harder for audiences in different countries to access music videos by their favourite artists/bands because the videos were often only released in one or two countries and would only be played on the tv. 

TV stations

Music videos were first broadcast on television, and are still a popular medium to watch music videos. TV channels such as MTV and 4Music play old and current music which primarily target teenagers and young adults. MTV have created separate channels dedicated to different genres of music, in order to make it easier for audiences to access the type of music and artists/bands that they are interested in. 

Media players

Audiences can stream and download music and music videos on electronic devices via media players such as iTunes for an affordable price. This way of accessing music videos is being more and more popular because it allows the audience to access the music video on demand, whenever and wherever they are.