So I know that this may seem like a completely dull topic to blog about but I’m going to try my hardest to make it interesting so just hear me out. After posting my last blog I was worried it seemed a bit too generic so for this one I’m going to be drawing in an example to hopefully make this a lot more interesting!
My main hobby which takes up about 10 hours a week for me is all-star cheer, to anyone outside the USA you probably do not have a clue what it is, so below are a few pictures summing it up:
Basically it’s competitive gymnastics with elements of cheer involved, no pom poms or chanting before you get that image in your head! Anyone who vagulely follows the sport will have noticed a HUGE change over the past 5/6 years in terms of the music these teams perform to. Early days (1980’s when it first started becoming popular) teams would compete their routine to one song, very basic and simple like pretty much most items or products when they are first released. Fast forward to 2006 when events such as the worlds finals dominated America, being aired on ESPN to an audience of around 20million people worldwide; every single team competing (all 100+) of them had highly complex mixes to perform their 2 minutes 30 second routine to, including custom voice overs and cost around $800 for the privilege. Why do teams pay that much for a 2:30 mix? You can argue that if you are performing in front of 20million + people, you want to come off as professional as possible, and so paying that little bit extra for the music is worth while.
Fast forward to present day, the all-star cheer music industry is very much an oligopily dominated by 2 major music producers: Patrick from cheermusicpro.com and Jrizz from xtremetracks.com; both of which charge around $3,000 for a 2:30 mix, and each year will be maxed out with teams asking for their services. But how can they afford to charge these extortionate prices for mixes? The rules are identical to how they were 6 years ago, the time is still exactly the same and the cheer music industry is saturated with mixers trying to get their foot into the door. As we can already see this is an imbalance of power, as seen prominantly within the US auto-manufacturers industry (90% being dominated by 5 industries) FCRM [Online] accessed 12/1/12.
The supply chain is influenced predominantly by market shifts and product development, and when applying this to the cheer music industry it is clear to see there has been a huge development in these mixes, Patrick has managed to get Ke$ha and Celine Dion to do voice overs for his 2012 mixes whilst Jrizz has hired a bunch of specialist voice-over artists to do raps, a massive change for 6 years ago when many teams mixes only had their team name as a voice over.
If we look at a team in particular, for example Cheer Athletics 'Wildcats' in 2006 had their music produced by Jrizz, and again this year (2012) it is been produced by the exact same producer, but the videos below show the difference in how the music has evolved due to innovation:
And again 2012:
And then proof that Celine Dion and Ke$ha have been used this year:
As we can see, the innovation throughout the past 6 years has created almost two completely different products; from an outsiders view it is evident that there are a lot more voice overs whereas from a more in-depth analysis the whole composition of how the music is made has changed, the transitions, back beats etc have all changed to match the innovation of the voice overs.
For a company to survive it must grow and expand, the old proverb of not putting all your eggs in one basket is definitely the case for the cheer music industry. Many producers now double up their studios where they mix their music as music studios for bands and other artists meaning that these producers now have alternate areas to expand into. The global recession has not stopped these companies from increasing their prices; their clinets will continue to use their services as their mixes are "stand-out" mixes; completely unique and original and therefore stick out more for the judges and spectators. This in turn brings in added revenue due to a greater exposure and fan base, and so in one instance it would be fair to say that in fact the mixes are investments for the cheer gyms themselves. Demand for cheer music is on the increase, especially with it's increased popularity within the UK and other countries now, so it seems unlikely Patrick, Jrizz and any of the other music producers will see a decline in orders over the forseeable future; after all when you can offer someone exclusive voice overs from Ke$ha and Celine Dion not many people would turn that down!
Reference List:
Cheermusicpro [Online] found at: www.cheermusicpro.com, accessed 12/1/12
FCRM [online], found at: http://www.fcrm.ir/mads/ebk1051.pdf, accessed: 12/1/12
Xtremetracks [Online], found at: www.xtremetracks.com, accessed 12/1/12
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