The purpose of this thesis was to study the importance of virtual communities for independent Record companies. It also aims to examine how these companies use virtual communities in their marketing activities and how to gain competitive advantages by working with virtual communities. A case study based on interviews was conducted with managers from two independent Record companies, Music Is My Girlfriend Recordings and B&B Records. Our study has shown that virtual communities are important for independent Record companies as tools for finding and addressing the right target market. Useful information about the members of these communities can easily be gathered with the use of the various search options that are available.

Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to define and analyse how Swedish Record companies work with digital musical content distributors. A more narrow aim is to show how the Record companies and with the digital musical content distributors iTunes Music Store and Spotify create incentives for consumer?s to use legal digital music channels through the Internet. To further circle the core of the problem following questions have been asked: How does the Record companies provide iTunes Music Store and Spotify with digital content and what is done by the Record companies to retain control over the material? How do the Record companies view digital musical sales and what incentives are given to consumers to buy music digitally? Finally, What position of power do iTunes Music Store and Spotify have on the digital content arena?Material/Method: The data collected for this thesis is retrieved through personal interviews with representatives from three of the four major Record companies Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI and their Swedish branches.Main results: The consumer?s access to digital content through iTunes Music Store and Spotify is of the utmost importance and is a prerequisite.

Konsten att sälja sig själv/The art of selling yourself grasps the complex of problems that occur when artists chooses to start their own Record companies. Not only must the artist fulfil the cultural aspects of being an artist but also the economical aspects of running a business. This means that the artist?s identities and roles become more complex. The purpose of this paper is to understand the construction of identities among artists who run their own Record companies.

The purpose of this thesis was to study the importance of an artist?s personal brand from a record company and artist management perspective. We also aimed to investigate how these companies work to create and maintain an artist?s personal brand. The study conducted was a case study based on interviews with staff members of a major record company, Universal Music AB, and an artist management, United Stage Management Group AB.

Aim: The aim for this study of Swedish daily press is to see how the musical reporting is structured for the newspapers I have chosen to analyse. My main purpose is to investigate how the newspapers reporting are distributed between artists who belong to either a major record company or an independent record company. With this research I want to find out if there are any economic backgrounds to the content and if the reporting is equal to the market production.Method/Material: For this study I have studied, by quantitative research, every piece of musical reporting in seven daily newspapers for two weeks. Through thorough research I have determined the belonging of every article?s record company.

This thesis aims to explore the process where strategies for music artists are created by Record companies. We describe and analyze how decisions regarding signing, distribution, marketing, bookings and co-operations are made. Through our study we find that the strategy process can be described as a pattern according to Mintzberg's definition. The "inside-out" perspective is dominating and the Record companies base their strategies on internal core competencies and the artistry and will of the music artist. The underlying causes of this are the uncertainty that characterizes the industry; the focus on social relations; and the importance of cultural legitimacy..

During the last decade the conditions for the music industry have been changed significantly. With the dropping sales of physical phonograms and the increasing illegal file sharing, the record labels have been forced to adapt and thus seek alternative sources of income next to the traditional sales of phonograms. Our purpose was to investigate how smaller Swedish record labels adapt themselves to the changing environment within the music industry and which new alternative sources of income they can use to finance their music production. To do this we used a deductive approach where we started by researching theories we thought were relevant to the subject, which we then used to get valuable information out of our informants.From our empirical investigations it appears that the independent record labels are rather positive about the future and that they will be able to survive, even though they will have to change their ways of working to a large extent. Our results show that the record labels as we know then will disappear.

The aim of this paper is to define the perceived consumer values that physical record stores create in order to compete with other distribution technologies. A qualitative method has been used, based on interviews with managers of three records stores in Stockholm. Interviews with their customers have been conducted also. The content has been analyzed with passable theories and the two sources have been compared when adequate.The conclusion of the study is that the physical record stores create many different consumer values, and that many of these are hard to transfer to other distribution technologies. One of the most important values for the consumer is that the personnel have a broad knowledge about music.

Research shows that almost 30 per cent men and 20 per cent women at the age of 16-24 in Sweden download music on a regular basis instead of buying records. Thanks to modern technologies teenagers of today have become used to downloading music illegally from theInternet. Even though legal alternatives, such as Spotify, have become popular, the behavior of illegal download of music still persists. What do Record companies do to prevent this phenomenon and why do they go to such length to stop this widespread movement? The question is, why is illegal download of music a problem ? and for whom? To investigate this I?ve read books about the subject, analyzed web pages of alternative Record companies and interviewed a drummer in a local band.

The music industry has been subject to great changes during the last ten years. The most significant factor contributing to this change is the increasing usage of broadband and thereby the increasing frequency of downloading music illegally. Music piracy and file sharing have caused record sales to plummet. Consumers have now moved on to consuming music in a digital format, not only through downloading but also from streaming music online, an activity partly made possible by social media channels such as YouTube. As the consumption patterns have changed companies within the music industry have been forced to find other sources of income than record sales and they have also needed to find alternate ways to market their artists.

ABSTRACTErik Ageberg: Who's that girl? ? Skivbolagskultur och dess påverkan på Robyn. Uppsala Universitet: Institutionen för Musikvetenskap. C-uppsats, 2006.Robyn has been one of the most successful Swedish pop stars during the last decade. She has during these ten last years gone from being a young star to being the owner of her own record label, Konichiwa Records.

Spotify is a music service that offers on-demand streaming and is available in several countries worldwide. As the company and the interest for it grows, more and more parties are involved and those involved, including the record labels want to control and get an overview of their products. They want to be able to see, for example, when a product is available on Spotify and in which countries.Spotify is in May 2013 in process of developing a to be used by administrators on Spotify in order to meet the record labels with the information requested. The new software intends being used by administrators but also by the record labels so that they will be able to overview their products availability.We were asked by one of the developers to conduct user interviews and tests to result in a design proposal on how the display page of information about a product could be visualized more clearly so that it suits both record labels and employees at Spotify. The results of our contextual interviews were translated into a prototype with two display pages.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explain what possibilities the new license between Youtube and Stim can have for Swedish artists and what impact this may have for the Swedish major record labels? competitive advantage. Based on this, the aim is also to describe how artists' position of power against major record labels may change due to the license.Method The essay is based on an inductive approach. The authors have used a qualitative research method to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon investigated. Primary sources have been collected using a variety of interviews from different parts of the Swedish music industry.Conclusion The Swedish major labels still hold a strong position today both when it comes to power balance and attractiveness.

ABSTRACTErik Ageberg: Who's that girl? ? Skivbolagskultur och dess påverkan på Robyn. Uppsala Universitet: Institutionen för Musikvetenskap. C-uppsats, 2006.Robyn has been one of the most successful Swedish pop stars during the last decade. She has during these ten last years gone from being a young star to being the owner of her own record label, Konichiwa Records.

The aim of the study was to describe what district nurses, who work with telephone- advice, document in patient record, to be able to develop their documentation. The Authors have examined 50 patient records. The examination tool is collected from ?Lokal anvisning för hälso- och sjukvården I Södra Älvsborg?. The audit areas was record keeping, review and planning, realization, individual nursing and the patients participation, information, education and agreement.