Book Review: Music Business and the Experience Economy. The Australasian Case

“Music Business and the Experience Economy” is the first book on the music business in Australasia from an academic perspective. In a cross-disciplinary approach, the authors deal with a wide-range of topics concerning the production, distribution and consumption in the digital age. The interrelationship of legal, aesthetic and economic aspects in the production of music in Australasia is also highlighted as well as the emergence of new business models, the role of music file sharing, and the live music sector. In addition, the impact of the digital revolution on music experience and valuation, the role of music for sports and branding, and last but not least the developments of tertiary music education, are discussed from different perspectives.

Peter Tschmuck, Philip L. Pearce and Steven Campbell (eds.), 2013, Music Business and the Experience Economy. The Australasian Case. Heidelberg & New York: Springer, ISBN: 978-3-642-27897-6.

For a more detailed book review please click here for further reading.

How Bad is Music File Sharing? – Part 25

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the EU Commission recently published a study entitled “Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data” with remarkable results. The authors, Luis Aguiar and Bertin Martens, concluded that music file sharing as well as music streaming have a significant positive impact on legal music downloads. The study is based on Clickstream data from Nielsen NetView. The database contains all the clicks of 25,000 Internet users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom for the calendar year 2011. In the following the main finding “(…) that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format” will be further investigated.

Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People in the UK

The study Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People is the third survey of its kind – after 2008 and 2009 – for 2011. After a presentation of the key findings of the study in the 3^rd Vienna Music Business Research Days, it’s now an honour and pleasure to exclusively present the results of the current study on the blog. The 2011 study is based on a comprehensive online survey of 1,888 of 14-24 year olds across the UK. The main conclusion of the current research is “(…) that when it comes to music and young people, everything is different, and yet everything is still the same”; compared to 2008 and 2009.

The key findings of the 2011 study are:

• The computer is no longer their main entertainment hub.
• Digital music collections are still huge.
• Digital music collections still contain 50 percent “free” music.
• Ownership is still important.
• Music is no longer the most popular entertainment type.
• There remains a very clear “value gap”.
• The popularity of file sharing has changed significantly.
• The 14-25 years olds are prepared to pay for digital music.
• But there are still challenges for streaming music online.
• Digital music consumption is still complex.
• They have a clear understanding and grasp of what copyright law is.

Please read further if you want to know more about the research results.

The Second “Vienna Music Business Research Days” in Retrospective

The second “Vienna Music Business Research Days”, which were held at the University of Music and Performings Arts Vienna from June 8-10, 2011, were devoted to “New Music Distribution Models”. Therefore, the economic potentials, which are involved in the new music distribution models, were highlighted. In addition, the impact of music downloading, music streaming and cloud-based music models on musicians and music consumers was also discussed.

Beyond the speeches and panel discussion with music industry experts, a young scholars’ workshop was organized the first time. PhD and master students presented the results of their research on “Innovations in Music Business” and discussed them with advanced academics in this field.

In the following summary of the second “Vienna Music Business Research Days” most of the speeches and discussion of June 8-9 can be downloaded in audio format, in printed version and as presentations.

Vienna Music Business Research Days 2011

On June 8th, the second Vienna Music Business Research Days on “New Music Distribution Models” will start at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna). The main question, who profits from the new models of music distribution – downloading, streaming, cloud-music, will be  highlighted from different perspectives by international music business experts until June 1oth. For the program, please visit our conference webpage, where you also can download the conference folder.

The panel discussion in the evening of June 8th on the question “Is Streaming the answer …?” (in German) as well as the whole conference day on June 9th will be live streamed on the Internet: mms://mms.mdw.ac.at/musikwirtschaftsforschung_live 

Music Experience and Behavior in Young People in the UK – a workshop presentation

On 17 January 2011 Dennis Collopy and David Bahanovivh from the University of Hertfortshire presented the results of the panel study on “Music Experience and Behavior in Young People” in a workshop at the Institute of Culture Management and Culture Studies at University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Until now results are available for 2008 and 2009, but the next wave of interviews will be conducted in spring 2011.

Music Experience and Behavior in Young People, Survey results 2008

Music Experience and Behavior in Young People, Survey results 2009

Presentation of the 2008 and 2009 results 

In the following the results of both studies will be highlighed:

How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 17

Michel’s working paper is based on 4 chapters of his dissertation thesis entitled “A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Impact of the Digital Age on the Music Industry”. In addition two articles in the Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues are also based on the findings of the dissertation thesis. Michel constructed a model of interactions between artists, record labels, and consumers, which suggests that file sharing may have been undertaken by consumers who were previously not in the market for music. In order to test his model, Michel provided evidence, based on Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) data, that “(…) file sharing decreased CD sales by about 4 percent, though the estimate is statistically insignificant” (Michel 2005: 30).

How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 14

In his 2006 working paper Lee investigated how price and free music availability jointly affect the consumer’s willingness to buy and how price and non-price factors (rating of singers, genre preferences, number of songs on CDs, and music consumption style) change the “free” vs. “non-free” Internet availability conditions. The results of a survey of about 500 students of Korea University in Seoul indicate that there is a weak interaction of CD prices and free music availability, whereas in the non-free Internet availability situation price has a significant effect on consumer purchasing patterns for some CDs. More can be read here:

How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 10

Wendy Chi examined in a John Hopkins University working paper (Chi 2008) whether file sharing crowds out purchases of physical and digital music by using Forrester Research’s consumer mail surveys for the years 2004 to 2006, which are representative samples for the U.S. and Canada. In her study, Chi comes to the result that “illegal” downloads and physical and non-physical music purchases are positively correlated and that the sampling effect of file sharing dominates the substitution effect. Therefore filesharing does not necessarily hurt music sales. Why this should be the case can be read here.