A Study on Record Company''s Decision-Making Method For Selecting Artists in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Kung-Chang Teng, 鄧孔彰
• Other Authors: Yaw-Chu Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56994577991713639094

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 傳播管理研究所碩士在職專班 === 90 === The problem of piracy has severely threatened the livelihood of Taiwan''s record industry. In addition to cutting operational costs through such measures as staff cut-back, salary reduction and merger, record companies are also actively seeking alternative ways to produce revenue; the most frequently used strategy is to launch new artists. However, the standards that record companies used in the past to audition new artists are often vague and influenced by personal preferences and experiences, lacking a clear set of fair and objective rules. Furthermore, such important decisions are often subject to change as the decision-maker and the environment change. As a result, such decisions themselves are filled with fuzzy ideas and concepts. The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision-making method for selecting artists, which can serve as a reference for record company''s artist selection process. Extensive research has pointed out that an artist, like a product, consists of three major commercial aspects: the core product, the actual product and the augmented product. Surveys and interviews with executives from Taiwan''s five major international record companies and the two major local record companies further show that record companies judge an artist’s potential based on 17 criteria, including voice attractiveness, personality attractiveness, voice quality, singing techniques, talents, charm, music writing ability, and physical appearances, etc. These criteria, together with the commercial aspects mentioned earlier, form a hierarchy decision-making structure. The AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) is then employed to determine the weight of key criteria within the structure.The concepts of triangular fuzzy number and linguistic values are used to assess the preference ratings of linguistic variable, “importance” and “satisfaction”. Through the hierarchy integration, we obtain the final scores of artists performance. This paper then uses the Chang and Chen fuzzy number ranking method to derive the best possible solution — in this case, the artist — and provides it to record company executives as a reference. This paper uses EMI as the test subject to validate this decision-making method. It provided the company with the processes entailed in executing the method, and helped prioritized the launching method of the company’s new artists. Key words: analytic hierarchy process. Multi-criteria decision.new artists..