Background research into media institution:

Universal Music Group (UMG):

Universal Music Group is an American music corporation that is the ‘world’s leading music
company’. It is ruled over by the French conglomerate Vivendi. It sits alongside Sony Music
and Warner Music Group and one of the three biggest record labels globally.

It has various locations across the globe, based in 77 countries in total, with some of these
being: the main headquarters in Santa Monica, LA, Hollywood, New York City, London,
Berlin and Warsaw, demonstrating the global reach of the record label. As well as this UMG
have a joint share in many other smaller record labels, with some of the most popular of
these being: Interscope Records, Republic Records, Def Jam Recordings and the Capitol
Music Group.

Some of the most popular and biggest artists that are signed to the label are popstars such
as Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Rihanna, to rappers such as Kanye West and Drake to even
Latin acts such as J Balvin and Enrique Iglesias. Therefore showing the variety and thought
for the needs of all types of musical genres to be on their record label, in order to reach the
greatest amount of followers.

Before the company finally became what we know it as today, it was formerly Decca
Records from 1934-1971, MCA Records from 1971-1989, and then MCA Music
Entertainment Group 1989-1996, when in 1996 it then became the Universal Music Group.
Furthermore it was also linked with the movie studio Universal Pictures at some point in
time, however through being bought multiple times, this link appears to have been broken.

The two main people/leaders in high power for the label are Lucian Grainge, who happens
to be the chairman and CEO of the company as well as Boyd Muir who is the CFO. They help
run this company of 6,967 employees across the globe who work together to grow the label,
find new artists and so forth.

Target Audience Background:

The largest proportion of my audience is typically going to be males, ranging from the ages
of 12-30 and therefore part of the adolescent to young adult age bracket. Furthermore,
seeing as my artist is for an icon for the working class, as well as being able to be marketable
to the mainstream media, I would place my audience to be widely across the socio-
economic scale, and therefore ABCDE. Therefore meaning he is listened to by those in high
ranking positions such as managerial roles, to those such as students, or the unemployed.
My artist would very much appeal to the mainstream and rap/hip-hop culture has risen to
the top of the mainstream and is perhaps even popular than other genres such as pop in
recent years and would therefore again heavily appeal to a mainstream audience due to the
type of music being produced, however still appealing to a lower class/urban audience due
to the artists branding/foundations.