The article in the wall street journal talks about Lady Gaga, a dance/pop singer who was named the Best New Artist at MTV’s video music awards for her hit song “Paparazzi”. Lady Gaga is the singer to watch on the music industry as she has attracted many fans within a very short time who even want to celebrate her by having National Lady Gaga day.
This shows that she has embarked well on the music industry and has changed how the music business is to be done. Her fans are dressing like her singing, dancing, having themed parties, wearing Kermit the frog jacket etc just for them to have fun as they celebrate her.
Lady Gaga is worth being emulated in the music industry for her ever different look when performing, market intelligence, control, and narrowed-busting sound which have attracted a concrete fan base.
Besides her writing skills, Gaga loves music, fashion, appeal globally and visual theatrics. Lady Gaga’s contract includes merchandise, sales of music, make-up deal and going on tour. This is what it takes to succeed in the music business today (Jurgensen, 2010).
The first lesson to learn from Lady Gaga’s success is her digital phenomenon. This has brought in massive digital sales of up to 321.5 million plays of her music through MySpace and the YouTube. This is a great measure of fans’ loyalty. The second lesson is on her “360” deal in which she is one of the few major artists to have signed it (Jurgensen, 2010).
This is the contract that allows the label to have a fraction of the artists’ revenue from all the businesses which include concerts, merchandise among others earlier enjoyed wholly by the artists. Finally, Lady Gaga is seen as the next Madonna as she loves underbelly and uses theatrics.
In her music she plays with the use of language for example “monsters” which she refers to “fans”, and when performing she shape-shifts costumes. This has made her songs be played widely on radio stations making her access full multimedia package.
One of the market research is use of survey method which includes telephone, mail, and email, personal interview surveys in order to get reliable information as this is much faster, accurate, cheap, flexible and effective. The customers’ feelings also to her products will be established and a comparison to her competitors can be done by deeply analyzing the gathered data.
Observation is also done in order to know how often customers view the products of lady gaga, gets attracted, and gets the message and if they are motivated to buy the music or attends her concerts.
It also provides the best way to analyze the customers and the market behavior so as to understand their trend and responsiveness to the product changes in price, quality and using that to make decisions that will guide in the best way to handle their experiences over a given time and whether it improves the image of Lady Gaga.
The internet services can further be utilized by checking the comments of various people about her, login in to YouTube and MySpace to know the number of times viewed.
The “360” deal is the contract between the record label and the artist that enables the label to get a fraction of the artists’ earnings from all businesses besides music sales, contrary to the earlier notion in which the artists pocketed all the earnings. This extends to the concerts revenues and merchandise among other deals like the one with Polaroid and other corporate partners.
The “360”deal is good as it will enable the artists to enjoy full support of their label all through their career without concentrating on music sales alone. It’s an opportunity for the artists to explore and develop their careers in the hands of able record labels as they will be professionally guided on issues relating to the target market, sales and promotions, the quality of music, and in developing their career on a long term basis.
This also makes the labels to be accountable to the artists unlike before when they used to make sure that the artists are deducted every penny they have made against any expenditure incurred by the labels (Jurgensen, 2010). This also is a window for employment opportunities to the many upcoming artists and labels that will have to major in marketing strategies.
The artist will also enjoy a sales and promotion services from their label. On the other hand, the ‘360’ deal have not been welcomed by many like The Pussy Cat Dolls who argue that it’s purely a profit making to the labels out of their own sweats yet the labels have been operating without it in the past. I concur with the pussycat Dolls as this will suggests that the labels business has been a failure due to mismanagement (Jurgensen, 2010).
Reference
Jurgensen, J.’ The Lessons of Lady Gaga’ The wall street journal, 2010.