The Impact Of Online Music Services On The Music Recording Industry

Master's Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Communications - Multimedia, Internet, New Technologies, grade: B1, University of Glasgow, course: Media Management, language: English, abstract: The music business is one of the few industries that has trouble growing profits in its transition to digital. Digital media, downloads, mobile music streams, music flat rates, peer-to-peer networks and the rise of 'freeconomics' on the Internet are partly responsible for the reduction in CD sales in recent years. The question that is most important for the industry is how the widespread of freely available content and illegal downloading can be monetised. One approach to model around the main threats to the music industry is the development of online music services. Thus, this study is an attempt to address the issue of 'what are the opportunities and challenges posed by online music services for the music recording industry?' Referring to empirical findings of a consumer survey and expert interviews, both opportunities and challenges can be identified for the music recording industry. The opportunities surrounding the development of these services are encouraging. Deriving from the challenges, the music recording industry must ensure that online music services are a supplement to traditional ways of consumption and do not turn into a replacement of physical music consumption. Concluding online music services have a small impact on the recording industry. The industry might benefit from closely cooperating with online music services by learning more about consumers' tastes. Nevertheless, the online businesses are struggling to break even and revenues from streaming will not overcome legal downloads or CD sales as major revenue stream anytime soon.

Over the last decade, streaming services quickly gained momentum and now represent an integral part of many people's lives. They became possible as another way to distribute music only after the Internet radically transformed the entire music industry. In public, music streaming services like to present themselves as the ultimate solution to the illegal file sharing problem that has long plunged the music industry into a financial crisis. However, many different actors of the music industry took a critical take on this altruistic claim and increasingly challenged the practices of streaming services. Their criticism highlights that streaming services might have a substantial impact on the entire music industry. Building on this notion, this thesis aims to decompose some of the effects that streaming services had on the music industry. Based on an extensive review of the literature and two interviews with radio broadcasters, the results indicate that streaming services have turned the entire music industry upside down. They should no longer be seen as mere platforms in the distribution of music but rather as producers of unique music experiences. Their curated playlists try to guide users through every aspect of life and thereby exercise significant control over their lifestyle and mood. Streaming services are also net positive for total rights holder revenue despite cannibalizing sales from physical and digital formats. So, streaming services help the music industry to grow. However, the current pay-per-stream royalty payout system of streaming services places smaller independent artists at a disadvantage and might wipe out financially artists from niche genres. To overcome this obstacle, many artists started to make their songs more streaming-friendly by shortening their songs and changing the structure of their compositions. As a result, consumers perceive new songs as increasingly similar and have difficulties keeping songs distinct and apart from one another. Streaming services have emerged as other large technology giants besides Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. Despite their dominance, streaming services' far reaching impacts on all involved stakeholders in the music industry are yet to be fully understood. Further research is needed to gain a more profound understanding of the effects of streaming services on the music industry.

The music industry is going through a period of immense change brought about in part by the digital revolution. What is the role of music in the age of computers and the internet? How has the music industry been transformed by the economic and technological upheavals of recent years, and how is it likely to change in the future? This is the first major study of the music industry in the new millennium. Wikström provides an international overview of the music industry and its future prospects in the world of global entertainment. They illuminate the workings of the music industry, and capture the dynamics at work in the production of musical culture between the transnational media conglomerates, the independent music companies and the public. The Music Industry will become a standard work on the music industry at the beginning of the 21st century. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, cultural studies, popular music, sociology and economics. It will also be of great value to professionals in the music industry, policy makers, and to anyone interested in the future of music.

The music industry is going through a period of immense change brought about in part by the digital revolution. What is the role of music in the age of computers and the internet? How has the music industry been transformed by the economic and technological upheavals of recent years, and how is it likely to change in the future? This is the first major study of the music industry in the new millennium. Wikström provides an international overview of the music industry and its future prospects in the world of global entertainment. They illuminate the workings of the music industry, and capture the dynamics at work in the production of musical culture between the transnational media conglomerates, the independent music companies and the public. The Music Industry will become a standard work on the music industry at the beginning of the 21st century. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, cultural studies, popular music, sociology and economics. It will also be of great value to professionals in the music industry, policy makers, and to anyone interested in the future of music.

The second edition of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the Streaming Era sheds light on the way large corporations appropriate new technology to maintain their market dominance in a capitalist system. To date, scholars have erroneously argued that digital music has diminished the power of major record labels. In iTake-Over, sociologist David Arditi suggests otherwise, adopting a broader perspective on the entire issue by examining how the recording industry strengthened copyright laws for their private ends at the expense of the broader public good. Arditi also challenges the dominant discourse on digital music distribution, which assumes that the recording industry has a legitimate claim to profitability at the expense of a shared culture. Arditi specifically surveys the actual material effects that digital distribution has had on the industry. Most notable among these is how major record labels find themselves in a stronger financial position today in the music industry than they were before the launch of Napster, largely because of reduced production and distribution costs and the steady gain in digital music sales. Moreover, instead of merely trying to counteract the phenomenon of digital distribution, the RIAA and the major record labels embraced and then altered the distribution system.

Aimed at songwriters, recording artists, and music entrepreneurs, this text explains the basics of digital music law. Entertainment attorney Gordon offers practical tips for online endeavors such as selling song downloads or creating an Internet radio station. Other topics include (for example) web site building, promoting through peer-to-peer networks, etc.

In the late 1990s, the MP3 became the de facto standard for digital audio files and the networked computer began to claim a significant place in the lives of more and more listeners. The dovetailing of these two circumstances is the basis of a new mode of musical production and distribution where new practices emerge. This book is not a definitive statement about what the new music industry is. Rather, it is devoted to what this new industry is becoming by examining these practices as experiments, dedicated to negotiating what is replacing an "object based" industry oriented around the production and exchange of physical recordings. In this new economy, constant attention is paid to the production and licensing of intellectual property and the rise of the "social musician" who has been encouraged to become more entrepreneurial. Finally, every element of the industry now must consider a new type of audience, the "end user", and their productive and distributive capacities around which services and musicians must orient their practices and investments.

Data on government sector receipts, and on taxes in particular, are basic inputs to most structural economic descriptions and economic analyses and are increasingly used in economic comparisons. This annual publication gives a conceptual framework to define which government receipts should be regarded as taxes.

This book charts the effects of new communication technologies and the Internet on the creation of music in the early 21st century. It examines how the music industry will be altered by the Internet, music online services and MP3-technology. This is done through an integrated model based on an international history of the industry since the phonograph’s invention in 1877, and thus, the history of the music industry is described in full detail for the first time.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, Kingston University London (Music), course: BA Music, language: English, abstract: The recording industry is undergoing an economic decline. The new generation needs a business model which supplements the demands of the digital age. This dissertation investigates the consumption of digital music. Rapid development in the digital music market has been led by the growth of online streaming services such as Spotify. Consumers now have the choice to obtain songs from a selection of paid and non-paid legal sources. A perspective concerning digital natives is seen through the theory of access replacing ownership. Consumer group analysis of demands shows that ownership seems to be outdated. Spotify acts as an example to the theory of access. Access and ownership is further examined in this dissertation. These ideas are analysed alongside the economic impact of consumer behaviour in the music industry.