Rethinking The Music Business

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.

Rethinking Music reflects the ideas of 24 distinguished musicologists as they evaluate current thinking about music, its social and ethical dimensions and the relationship between academic study and direct musical experience.

The music industry is one of the most dynamic business sectors. It has had to evolve and adapt to continually changing technologies and business models. Its latest challenge has been Covid-19 and the loss of live music at a time when live performance outstrips music sales as the primary source of income for today's artists. The second edition of this much used introduction to the economic workings of the music business explores the impact of the pandemic at every level of the sector and considers how the business model may need to change going forward as different stakeholder positions shift. The new edition also examines new trends in the music industry such as the increasing dominance of tech companies and data, the increasing importance of CMOs as market players, the increased role of artist management, which has impacted on new business contracts, as well as changes to how we use music in our everyday lives and how this impacts on new entrepreneurial behaviours around music.

This volume seeks to offer a new approach to the study of music through the lens of recent works in science and technology studies (STS), which propose that facts are neither absolute truths, nor completely relative, but emerge from an intensely collective process of construction. Applied to the study of music, this approach enables us to reconcile the human, social, factual, and technological aspects of the musical world, and opens the prospect of new areas of inquiry in musicology and sound studies. Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies draws together a wide range of both leading and emerging scholars to offer a critical survey of STS applications to music studies, considering topics ranging from classical music instrument-making to the ethos of DIY in punk music. The book’s four sections focus on key areas of music study that are impacted by STS: organology, sound studies, music history, and epistemology. Raising crucial methodological and epistemological questions about the study of music, this book will be relevant to scholars studying the interactions between music, culture, and technology from many disciplinary perspectives.

Record contracts have been the goal of aspiring musicians, but are they still important in the era of SoundCloud? Musicians in the United States still seem to think so, flocking to auditions for The Voice and Idol brands or paying to perform at record label showcases in the hopes of landing a deal. The belief that signing a record contract will almost infallibly lead to some measure of success— the “ideology of getting signed,” as Arditi defines it—is alive and well. Though streaming, social media, and viral content have turned the recording industry upside down in one sense, the record contract and its mythos still persist. Getting Signed provides a critical analysis of musicians’ contract aspirations as a cultural phenomenon that reproduces modes of power and economic exploitation, no matter how radical the route to contract. Working at the intersection of Marxist sociology, cultural sociology, critical theory, and media studies, Arditi unfolds how the ideology of getting signed penetrated an industry, created a mythos of guaranteed success, and persists in an era when power is being redefined in the light of digital technologies.

Everyone knows music is big business, but do you really understand how ideas and inspiration become songs, products, downloads, concerts and careers? This textbook guides students to a full understanding of the processes that drive the music industries. More than just an expose or 'how to' guide, this book gives students the tools to make sense of technological change, socio-cultural processes, and the constantly shifting music business environment, putting them in the front line of innovation and entrepreneurship in the future. Packed with case studies, this book: • Takes the reader on a journey from Glastonbury and the X-Factor to house concerts and crowd-funded releases; • Demystifies management, publishing and recording contracts, and the world of copyright, intellectual property and music piracy; • Explains how digital technologies have changed almost all aspects of music making, performing, promotion and consumption; • Explores all levels of the music industries, from micro-independent businesses to corporate conglomerates; • Enables students to meet the challenge of the transforming music industries. This is the must-have primer for understanding and getting ahead in the music industries. It is essential reading for students of popular music in media studies, sociology and musicology.

Now Magazine: “Top 5 Music Business Books” Hailed as an “indispensable” guide (Forbes), How to Make It in the New Music Business returns in a significantly revised and expanded third edition. How to Make It in the New Music Business, since its first publication in 2016, has become the go-to resource for musicians eager to make a living in a turbulent industry. Widely adopted by ambitious individuals and music schools across the world and considered “the best how-to book of its kind” (Music Connection), this essential work has inspired tens of thousands of aspiring artists to stop waiting around for that “big break” and take matters into their own hands. In this highly anticipated new edition, Ari Herstand reveals how to build a profitable career with the many tools at our fingertips in the post-COVID era and beyond, from conquering social media and mastering the digital landscape to embracing authentic fan connection and simply learning how to persevere. This edition breaks down these phenomena and more, resulting in a timeless must-have for anyone hoping to navigate the increasingly complex yet advantageous landscape that is the modern music business.

This book provides rare insights into the difficult and complex dialogues between stakeholders within and outside the music industries in a time of transition. It builds on a series of recorded meetings in which key stakeholders discuss and assess options and considerations for the music industries’ transition to a digital era. These talks were closed to the public and operated under the Chatham House Rule, which means that they involved a very different type of discussion from those held in public settings, panels or conferences. As such, the book offers a much more nuanced understanding of the industries’ difficulties in adjusting to changing conditions, demonstrating the internal power-struggles and differences that make digital change so difficult. After presenting a theoretical framework for assessing digital change in the music industries, the author then provides his research findings, including quotes from the Kristiansand Roundtable Conference. Following from these findings, he develops three critical concepts that explain the nature as well as the problems of the music industries’ adaptation process. In conclusion, he challenges the general definition of crisis in the music industries and contradicts the widely held view that digitalization is a case of vertical integration.