Madonna and business
American singer-songwriter and businesswoman Madonna started some enterprises in her career, including Maverick and its subdivision Maverick Records. She was one of the first women in music to have established an entertainment company and a record label. In its early years, Maverick Records became the highest-grossing artist-run label. She has received coverage by business journalism, becoming the first solo entrepreneur woman to appear on a Forbes cover (1990). Her entrepreneur's profile became visible to her public image in her first decades, receiving praise, although it was the only role recognized by many of her critics.
Despite the ever-evolving nature of business, Madonna received immediate and retrospectively interest from marketing, management and businesses communities for various reasons. She was discussed in related themes, including capitalism, marketing strategies and consumerism. Called the "Material Girl", Madonna also epitomized the consumer ethos of the 1980s and beyond, for which she attained both cultural praise and severe criticisms. She was considered the ultimate in crass commercialism and the epitome of banal consumerism. Madonna has been continually considered by many critics as only a marketing product. Furthermore, Madonna is also credited with pioneering some brand management strategies, and for helping shape music business even decades after her debut. Madonna also served as a role model of self-actualization and reinvention, inspiring expressions coined in the 2000s such as the "Madonna effect" by business professor Oren Harari and the "Madonna-curve" used by a think tank author for NATO.
Commercial and financially, Madonna became for a short-span the highest-grossing woman in media and ended as the highest-earning female musician of the 20th century. Into the 21st century, Madonna continued as the richest woman in music until being surpassed in 2019. She also became the first female artist to have earned more than $100 million in a single year (2009), and scored then the highest-earnings for a female pop star (2013). Madonna has appeared as Forbes top-earning female musician a record 11 times, spanning four decades (from 1987 to 2016). Culturally, Madonna's figure impacted tourism of some places, including Belize's San Pedro Town thanks to "La Isla Bonita", and during the 2000s in Israel which lead her being praised due to Second Intifada crisis.
Areas[edit]
Businesswoman role[edit]
Madonna has started various enterprises.[19] She became one of the first female celebrities to have ever established an entertainment company and a record label,[20][21] and became one of the first female CEOs in the industry.[22] Madonna received positive commentaries in the community; she is "herself a corporation, and a rather diverse one" wrote Miklitsch.[17] Similarly, Colin Barrow a visiting scholar at the Cranfield School of Management described her as "an organisation unto herself",[23] and Kevin Sessums also described her "a corporation in the form of flesh".[24]
Despite positive commentaries, Madonna debuted in an era when most entertainers avoided labels of "manager" or "businesswoman",[25] marked by a cultural perception at that time of art and commerce. American political analyst Matt Towery, described in 1998: "Madonna never tries to portray herself as a corporate manager or captain of industry".[26] She herself downplayed her role, saying "I don't think is necessary for people to know that".[27] Madonna was also quoted as saying: "I'm very flattered that everyone thinks I'm such a good businesswoman, but I think that to say that I'm a great manipulator, that I have great marketing savvy is ultimately an insult, because it undermines my power as an artist".[28] On the contrary, her profile became notorious at that time and her entrepreneurial talent begun labeled "legend" to the public perception and insiders.[29] In 2007, Billboard explained Madonna's CEO "has a reputation as being a tenacious executive as ubiquitous as her music".[21]
Cultural aspects[edit]
Background[edit]
Cross referential socio-cultural aspects were also remarked on by community, academics and media alike. Back in the 1980s, journalist Steve Anderson speaks of "Madonna's resonance in the minds of the public", saying she become a "repository for all our ideas", including money.[106] According to Theodore Koutsobinas in The Political Economy of Status (2014), media celebrities like Madonna were "widely seen as symbols" of the Great Moderation period.[107] For a notable portion of public, including authors, she became a paradigm of the Reaganomics era,[108] and also for the Thatcherism in the United Kingdom.[109] Thomas Ferraro granted her an "important" cultural role as a whole, at least for young public in the 1980s, defending his point by saying she was a "miracle worker, and wonder woman", the "faith healer" of Reagan's divide and-conquer America.[110]