Abstract
The problem: the aim of this research was to discover if social media were the new
way to promote pop music in France. In order to examine this, this research tended
to highlight the main changes that occurred in certain elements of the marketing mix
of the pop music industry in France, but also to show what were the impacts of
social media in the pop music industry, to explore how social media were used by
music marketers, musicians and the audience to promote and discover pop music
in France, and finally, to show if social media were the only way to promote pop
music in France.
Methodology: This dissertation was an exploratory study, which had a grounded
theory strategy and which employed a mixed-method choice of research using both
quantitative and qualitative data. This research studied a particular phenomenon at
a particular time so it was a cross-sectional research. The data have been gathered
within an interpretivist research philosophy and used an inductive approach. The
quantitative data have been collected through a questionnaire and the qualitative
data via semi-structured interviews. The population of the quantitative research was
composed of 120 students from ISEG Bordeaux and the population of the
qualitative research was composed of 4 people who worked in the music industry in
France: a music programmer and communications manager of a concert hall in
Bordeaux, a director of an independent label in Bordeaux, a project manager of an
online platform that help musicians in their digital practices and, finally, a music
band from Limoges.
Conclusions: The Internet has drastically changed the pop music industry, all the
marketing mix elements are touched and the promotion part is the one that is the
most affected. Plus, the intensive use of social media has changed the way in
which the music is diffused and promoted because people discover, listen,
consume and share music through those networks. Thus, social media are now
mainly used by French music marketers, musicians and the audience to promote or
discover pop music, and the part of traditional media has decreased. But there are
still limits in conducting music promotion on social media and traditional media are
still used for music promotion in France. Author keywords: Music promotion, pop music, France, social media, marketing mix
