Music market communication 2.0 : A study on how Swedish independent labels in the music business communicates with their market through social networks online.

This essay has a purpose of looking at Swedish independent labels in the music industry and how they communicate with their market through social networks on the internet. There have not been much research about this in the past and we hope to contribute with knowledge to the area. In mind we had the changing music industry, an evolution of the internet and viral marketing communication. To answer our research question we decided to conduct three interviews with people who worked at independent labels and had market communication as their area ofresponsibility. The three independent labels in our study were based in Sweden, except for one that is based in London, England as well as Stockholm, Sweden. We selected the independent labels based on their tendency to work with marketing communication in the social networks on the internet. The interviews were very open in their structure to encourage dialog, but still had a focus on how they communicate through social networks on the internet. We applied theories about web 2.0, viral marketing communication and marketing communication in the music industry on the answers we got from the interviews. The result we got showed that the independent labels were willing to work with marketing communication through social networks on the internet. It showed that they used four major social networks to communicate, and it also showed that they tend to integrate these features with their artists to communicate with their fans. We discovered that not all independent labels are using this new form of communication to the fullest, and there are many things they can improve. The main reason for this type of marketing communication was that the independent labels don't have economic resources for traditional marketing communication. Based on this we came to a conclusion regarding that independent labels should focus almost all their market communication through social networks on the internet. We found that you do this by building networks with loyal recipients within the existing social networks to be able to communicate and be fully able to exploit the viral communication effect