Dear readers of the music business research blog,
Music streaming dominated the music business year 2014. Taylor Swift attracted global media attention when she pulled her music catalogue from Spotify music streaming service blaming the Swedish company for insufficient royalty payments. She, thus, followed the footsteps of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and other artists who have criticized Spotify and other streaming services for poor payouts – a fact also highlighted in my blog post “Is Streaming the Next Big Thing? – The artists’ perspective”.
Nevertheless, music streaming has been a booming business model in 2014. Revenues from music streaming increased in almost all markets – e.g. in the U.S., Japan, Germany and Brazil. New services have been launched such as Amazon’s Prime Music and YouTube’s Music Key. And music subscription service Beats was part of the largest takeover in the music industry when Apple purchased Beats Electronics, but mainly for the valuable headphone line. Apple again was in the headlines when it announced that the latest U2 album “Songs of Innocence” was given away for free to all the Apple users – a US $100m marketing campaign for Apple with questionable results.
The business model of music streaming was also one of the main topics of the 5th Vienna Music Business Research Days on “How to Monetize Music in the Digital Age” (October 1-3, 2014), which were held the first time in cooperation with the Waves Vienna Festival & Conference at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. A conference track day supplemented for the first time the Young Scholars’ Workshop and the invited conference day with conference papers presented by academics from Austria, Australia, Brazil, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. In the course of the VMBR-Days the best paper of the Young Scholars’ Workshop was awarded for to Jordana Viotto da Cruz of University 13 Paris and to Esther Bishop of Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen. Both papers are considered for publication in the International Journal of Music Business Research (IJMBR).
Music Business Research 2014 – in retrospective
In 2014, the volume 3 of the IJMBR was published with two issues in April and October:
Ben O’Hara: Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Music Business Education, pp. 28-59
Beatrice Jetto: Music Blogs and the Music Industry: Collusion or Independence?, pp. 60-80
David Allan: Turn It Up: That’s My Song in That Ad, pp. 26-51
In the next section you can find a list of all theses & papers which were added to the blog in 2014, but also recently published studies and books related to music business/industry research are listed:
Punzengruber, Roland, Auswirkungen von On-Demand-Musikstreaming auf die Wertschöpfungsprozesse der Musikindstrie. Master Thesis, Johannes-Kepler-University Linz. (with a link to interview partner Dr. Jonathan Dörr)
The following studies, reports and working papers with a music business/industry focus were published in 2014:
Edison Research & Triton Digital, The Infinite Dial 2014. Online Radio and Music Discovery.
Ofcom, The Communications Market: The Digital Radio Report for the UK.
Music business/industry books published in 2014:
Büchele, Manfred & Markus Albrecht, Content Flatrate & Urheberrecht. Wien: Jan Sramek Verlag
Collins Steve & Sherman Young, Beyond 2.0. The Future of Music. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.
Johnson Jason A., Sell Out in the Music Business! Kindle Edition.
Mazor, Barry, Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
Steiner Paul, Sound Branding, 2. aktualisierte und erweiterte Auflage. Berlin etc.: Springer.
Finally, I would like to thank all the readers of the blog for 77,301 visits in 2014 – 212 visits per day. Most of the visitors came from the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Austria, Canada and France, but also from the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, India, Brazil, Ireland, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and from 169 further countries among them e.g. Lesotho, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Cayman Islands, Fidji Islands, Laos, Haiti, Palestine State, Botswana, China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Panama, Tunesia and Egypt.
The top-10 most visited blog entries in 2014:
- The recession in the music industry – a cause analysis with 6,051 visits
- Is Streaming the Next Big Thing? – An International Market Analysis with 4,943 visits
- Money from Music – a study on musicians’ revenue in the U.S. with 4,504 visits
- Is Streaming the Next Big Thing? – What Consumers Want with 3,936 visits
- The Recorded Music Market in der US, 2000-2013 with 3,934 visits
- Is Streaming the Next Big Thing? – The Business Models of Music Streaming Services with 3,790 visits
- Book Review: The Death & Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age by Jim Rogers with 1,522 visits
- Is Streaming the Next Big Thing? – The Artists’ Perspective with 1,286 visits
- Is Streaming the Next Big Thing? – The Labels’ Perspective with 1,204 visits
- The Recorded Music Market in Germany, 2003-2013 with 913 visits
To sum up, all articles and sites on the blog has been visited 211,963 times since March 2010 when I posted the first blogpost. Thus, the blog hit the 200,000 mark in 2014 with your support – thank you! Please come back all in 2015 to read e.g. about 6th Vienna Music Business Research Days on “Financing Music in the Digital Age” (conference call and call-for-papers for the Young Scholars’ Workshop) that will be held at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna from September 29 to October 1, 2015 – again in cooperation with Waves Vienna Festival & Conference. The fourth volume of the International Journal of Music Business Research will be published issues in spring and autumn 2015. And as usual you will find new blog entries on music business/industry topics, book reviews, conference announcements and updates of the several databases.
Hope I see you all again on the blog in 2015. Best wishes and a successful New Year,
PETER
Music Business Research 
Hey how does music streaming work and how do artist get paid from it if they do?