Digital Transformation In The Recording Industry

The recording industry has famously been transformed by technology throughout its entire history. The book presents an analysis of these changes using Porter's five forces model. The author highlights the evolution of buyers' and suppliers' power, the emergence of new competitors, product innovation and rivalry between companies in the industry driven by economic, political, social and legal factors. As an early mover in the social diffusion of copyright-sensitive content, the recording industry reflected in this book serves as an important reference for the analysis of other cultural and creative sectors.

"The recording industry has famously been transformed by technology throughout its entire history. The book presents an analysis of these changes using Porter's five forces model. The author highlights the evolution of buyers and suppliers power, the emergence of new competitors, product innovation and rivalry between companies in the industry driven by economic, political, social and legal factors. As an early mover in the social diffusion of copyright-sensitive content, the recording industry reflected in this book serves as an important reference for the analysis of other cultural and creative sectors"--

This book explores why widespread predictions of the radical transformation in the recording industry did not materialise. Although the growing revenue generated from streaming signals the recovery of the digital music business, it is important to ask to what extent is the current development a response to digital innovation. Hyojung Sun finds the answer in the detailed innovation process that has taken place since Napster. She reassesses the way digital music technologies were encultured in complex music valorisation processes and demonstrates how the industry has become reintermediated rather than disintermediated. This book offers a new understanding of digital disruption in the recording industry. It captures the complexity of the innovation processes that brought about technological development, which arose as a result of interaction across the circuit of the recording business – production, distribution, valorisation, and consumption. By offering a more sophisticated account than the prevailing dichotomy, the book exposes deterministic myths surrounding the radical transformation of the industry.

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,3, University of Münster, course: Digital Media Marketing Seminar, language: English, abstract: This seminar paper analyses how the digitalization has changed the general set-up of the music industry. By analyzing studies and data, the paper illustrates several challenges that influenced record sales. Considering the different type of players in the music industry - record labels, online and physical retailers, and artists - this paper will only discuss the challenges and effects of the digitalization on the major record labels. The challenges of digitalization for artists will not be covered in this paper; digital music actually enhances the chance of being discovered and for reaching a larger audience (Ankeny 2012). In this sense, the digitalization is an opportunity, rather than a challenge for artists. This also applies for online retailers such as iTunes and Amazon. Since digital music does not require physical storage, online retailers can offer music at almost zero costs. Thus, online retailers benefit from the digitalization of music. Physical retailers presumably lose revenue because of the digitalization of music. However, their situation will not be discussed further, in this paper. The major record labels are highly vertically integrated (Neff and Blömer 2003, p. 104). Besides managing artists, the recording companies are also in charge of the publishing and copyrights of music. Additionally, they have enormous production resources and strong distribution networks. This gives the major record labels a significant competitive advantage. However, this advantage was partly ruined by the digitalization. In this paper, digitalization of the music industry is limited to the impact of MP3s on the industry. The introduction of the CD as the first phase of digitalization is not further discussed. Chapter two deals with the challenge of piracy for the record companies. In chapter three, the increased competition as a challenge will be described. The change of the product music is discussed in chapter four. Chapter five presents the changing con-sumer behavior, as the final challenge for the major record labels. Every chapter is concluded by presenting the reactions of the record labels to the respective chal-lenges. The paper is rounded off by a conclusion, in which the main points are sum-marized and a discussion of future strategies for the record labels.

Patrik Wikström and Robert DeFillippi bring together innovative, multidisclipinary perspectives on business innovation and disruption in the music industry. Authors from fields such as cultural studies, economics, management, media studies, musicology and human geography in North America, Europe and Asia focus on the “second wave” of digital disruption and the transformation of the music industry. The chapters are structured into three parts: the first part contextualizes changes in the music industry that have been driven by digital technologies since the end of the 1990s. The second part unpacks the impact of these disruptive technologies on business models in specific industry sectors and geographies, and the third and final part examines questions related to the emergence of subscription music services. Concluding chapters link back to the role of hackers as a subversive and innovative force in the music economy and examine how hacker creativity can be facilitated and encouraged to generate the next big music industry innovation. This multifaceted look at the music business will serve as a resource for both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as established scholars and industry professionals.

This research-based book investigates the effects of digital transformation on the cultural and creative sectors. Through cases and examples, the book examines how artists and art institutions are facing the challenges posed by digital transformation, highlighting both positive and negative effects of the phenomenon. With contributions from an international range of scholars, the book examines how digital transformation is changing the way the arts are produced and consumed. As relative late adopters of digital technologies, the arts organizations are shown to be struggling to adapt, as issues of authenticity, legitimacy, control, trust, and co-creation arise. Leveraging a variety of research approaches, the book identifies managerial implications to render a collection that is valuable reading for scholars involved with arts and culture management, the creative industries and digital transformation more broadly.

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.

COVID-19 had a global impact on health, communities, and the economy. As a result of COVID-19, music festivals, gigs, and events were canceled or postponed across the world. This directly affected the incomes and practices of many artists and the revenue for many entities in the music business. Despite this crisis, however, there are pre-existing trends in the music business – the rise of the streaming economy, technological change (virtual and augmented reality, blockchain, etc.), and new copyright legislation. Some of these trends were impacted by the COVID-19 crisis while others were not. This book addresses these challenges and trends by following a two-pronged approach: the first part focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on the music business, and the second features general perspectives. Throughout both parts, case studies bring various themes to life. The contributors address issues within the music business before and during COVID-19. Using various critical approaches for studying the music business, this research-based book addresses key questions concerning music contexts, rights, data, and COVID-19. Rethinking the music business is a valuable study aid for undergraduate and postgraduate students in subjects including the music business, cultural economics, cultural management, creative and cultural industries studies, business and management studies, and media and communications.