Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Industrial Context - The Brand

Warner Music Group

  • Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG, is the third-largest music recording company in the world, being part of the 'Big Three'
  • It's an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City
  • It is currently owned by Access Industries

Company History

  • It was founded by Warner Bros. in 1958 when they launched Warner Bros Records. It was then sold to Seven Artist Productions in 1967, creating Warner Bros Seven Arts.
  • They then acquired Atlantic Records from Ahmet Ertegun, gaining a large catalogue of talent including big names such as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Wilson Pickett.
  • It was then acquired by the Kinney National Company for $400 million. Kinney then acquired Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records in a $10 million deal the following year. All of Kinney's labels were then merged into a new parent company, WEA, also known as Warner Music Group
  • In 1972, Kinney sold off their non-entertainment assets, rebadging itself as Warner Communications Inc.
  • In 1987, PolyGram sold publishing house Chappell Music to Warner for $275 million.
  • In January 1990, Time Inc. acquired Warner Communications for $14.9 billion.
  • Time Warner itself merged with AOL to for AOL-Time Warner on 11th January 2001, but the company dropped the AOL brand from its name in 2003.
  • Time Warner sold Warner Music Group to a group of investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. for $2.6 billion in February 2004.
  • In 2005, WMG held an initial public offering of stock on the New York Stock Exchange and remained publicly traded until its next big sale six years later.
  • Warner Music Group was sold again in May 2011 for $3.3 billion to Access Industries, which is controlled by billionaire Len Blavatnik.
  • In July 2013, WMG  acquired Parlophone Label Group from Universal Music Group, for $487 million.
  • In June 2020, WMG once again put some of the company on a stock exchange.

Website

  • When you first open the Warner Music Group website you are greeted with images of some of their most well-known and successful artists

  • As they are a corporation as you scroll down you will find the conventional corporate statements about what the company does and their significance
  • This is accompanied by the conventional photos of a large group of staff from different offices, displaying who works at the company to try and appeal to users showing that they are regular people excited to work at WMG, in turn making users excited too



Other Platforms

  • Instagram- instagram.com/warnermusic/?hl=en With over 430k followers, WMG is popular on Instagram, posting about recent shows and other related things about their talent. It allows them to easily market their talent on social media to people interested and generate an audience.
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