Adele

Production

How Adele got started

Adele was signed by XL Recordings on the basis of a demo CD which one of her friends posted onto MySpace. The record label heard the song and arranged to meet her so they could persuade her to sign a deal.

Producing Records

XL Recordings recorded her songs and put all the finishing touches to it. They did this solely by themselves to start with, but then as Adele started to get known globally, Columbia Records stepped in to help with distribution in the US. Adele never took off in America until she had a Saturday Night Live appearance and since then she has gone from strength to strength.

XL & Columbia

XL Recordings is an independent British record label. It is owned by Richard Bussell and it originated as a 1989 offshoot of Beggars Banquet Records. XL Recordings signed Adele first and helped her on her way to being a star in the UK, but once Columbia Records sign her as part of a synergy, she took off in America too. Columbia, who are a big part of Sony Music Entertainment, don’t own XL, but they work with them to help each other get the best results.

Marketing & Distribution

21 Album Adele released her highly anticipated album “21” on January 24th 2011 in the UK and 22nd February 2011 in the U.S.

To help sales in the U.S Adele announced that she would do a U.S tour called “Adele Live” which sold out and saw a huge rise in sales of the album.

The album's sound is described as classic and contemporaryCountry. This was a change from her first album because a bus driver was playing country music when she was touring the southern states in America.

Interviews – Vogue!!!

Adele has been the cover of vogue twice so far during her short career. She featured on the UK version in October 2011, however it was revealed by Vogue it was one of the worst selling issues to date. And UK vogue editor Alexandra Shulman revealed that “music artists don’t sell well” However Adele was Vogue’s covergirl less than a year later and featured on the cover in March 2012.

British vs. America

Adele first came into the spotlight as the BBC's Sound of 2008 winner. She was just 19, and the youngest act to be ever given this title. Her debut album, called 19, has sold 1.1 million copies to date. Adele performed “to make you feel my love” on the X Factor and this helped her become a household name and gain her successful British status.

BRITISH AMERICA

In 2010 Adele performed at the 2010 CMT awards and performed a duet with the highly respected country artist Darius Rucker, they performed a cover of Lady Antebellum’s number one hit “Need You Now.”

AwardsAdele has won a total of 95 awards in her career so far. This includes an Academy Award for her hit single Skyfall for the James Bond film, Skyfall.Adele also won a golden globe, once again for Skyfall.

Adele has also won many other awards such as various BRIT awards, in which she infamously got her speech cut by James Cordon. Adele also has 10 Grammy awards under her belt.

How is Adele targeted at a National audience (The UK)

By being signed by a British label as well as an American one, Adele has been heavily marketed in the UK. She has her name in the Guinness World Record Books as well for the first artist to sell over 3 million copies of an album in a year in the UK and has it certified four times platinum too. She also sang the latest James Bond Film’s theme song “Skyfall”, which won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. These achievements show how she has really caught the eye of the public in Britain.

Continued…

She has also featured on many Saturday night prime time TV shows such as; The Jonathon Ross Show, The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and many more. These TV shows have also propelled her to fame as millions of people watch them and would have seen her.

Synergy & Convergence

Skyfall

Who was involved?

The song was written by Adele herself and Paul Epworth, who works for the Sony owned Columbia Records. The song was the theme tune to the latest and most successful James Bond film and was recorded in 2012 at the Abbey Road Studios in London. It features orchestration by J.A.C Redford. The film company Eon Productions invited Adele to work on the theme in early 2011, which she accepted straight after reading the script.

Success

The song was an instant hit and went to number one in the UK iTunes online store in less than ten hours after it was released. The single sold 84,000 copies in the UK during the first two days of release and on October 14th it had sold 92,000 copies and tied with Duran Duran’s ‘A View to Kill’ as the highest charting Bond theme song. It was the 20th best selling song in UK in 2012 selling 547,000 copies. In the US it sold 261,000 in the first three days of release and debuted at number 8 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Skyfall led to 10% increase in sales of Adele’s last album, 21, in the US.Also the music video on AdeleVEVO on Youtube has had 90,000,000 views. VEVO is a company part owned by Sony.

Marketing

Sony Music Entertainment used Adele to sing the Skyfall theme tune to increase the popularity of both the film and song, which in turn marketed Adele to the public too. They also created merchandise to go with the film so that it would create more publicity for the company. Sony did this by using different products to advertise both Adele and the film which is an example of a synergy. Sony also formed a convergence between gaming, music and film industries by releasing a Skyfall game along with the soundtrack and film. The film promoted the game which promoted the soundtrack which promoted the film and so on.