Call-for Papers: Rethinking the Music Business – Music Contexts, Rights, Data and COVID-19

Call for chapters for an edited volume to be submitted to Springer’s Music Business Research Series

Editors
Guy Morrow (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Daniel Nordgård (University of Agder, Norway)
Peter Tschmuck (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria)

 

COVID-19 had, and is having, a global impact on health, communities and the economy. As a result of COVID-19, music festivals, gigs and events were cancelled 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.), new copyright legislation etc. Some of these trends were impacted by the COVID-19 crisis while others were not.

 

This edited volume will therefore be structured in two parts. The first part will feature more general perspectives and the second will focus on the impact of COVID-19 on the music business. This edited volume thus welcomes chapters that address issues within the music business before, during and after COVID-19.

 

The volume will be composed of 8000 word chapters (including footnotes and references), an Introduction by the editors and an Afterword.

– Deadline for submission of abstracts (300-400 words) and bio notes (100 words): 1 December 2020
– Notification of acceptance: 15 January 2021

– Book proposal submission: 20 January 2021
– Book contracted: February 2021
– First book chapter draft: 30 July 2021

 

Initial expressions of interest, enquiries and/or abstracts should be submitted to editors: Guy Morrow (guy.morrow@unimelb.edu.au), Daniel Nordgård (daniel.nordgard@uia.no) and Peter Tschmuck (Tschmuck@mdw.ac.at)

 

Advertisement

Music Business Research 2018 – in retrospective

Dear all,

The music business highlight of 2018 was Spotify’s IPO on April 3^rd. The public listing of the music streaming service at the New York Stock Exchange was warmly welcomed by the investors with a price per share of US $166 and a market capitalization of US $26.5bn.[1] In the following Spotify’s stock price reached an all-time high of US $196.3 at the end of July – giving it a market capitalization of US $35.3bn. In the meantime, however, Spotify’s stock price lost more than 40 percent and currently the company is worth US $20.6bn.[2] This can only partly be explained by a bearish stock market in the second half of 2018, since the S&P 500 stock exchange index lost just 11.7 percent in the same period. It seems that investors have doubts about Spotify’s business model. The business analysis highlights increasing losses despite a sharply rising number of monthly active users – currently 83m premium subscribers and 109m ad-supported monthly active users.[3] However, the music industry major companies (except Universal Music Group) and the indie label licencing agency MERLIN sold their stakes in Spotify shortly after its IPO at a profit. The recorded music majors are the main beneficiaries of the booming music streaming market, which has grown by 41.1 percent to globally US $6.6bn in 2017.[4]. In-depth analyses of the Universal’s as well as Warner’s business performance highlight that the major companies as well as larger indie labels have increasing revenues and profits due to music streaming.

Beyond Spotify and the booming music streaming, I also want to point at the following music business related topics in 2018:

• Vivendi’s plans to sell at least 50 percent of Universal Music Group to Liberty Media (owner Sirius XM Radio Inc.), which also bought a controlling stake in US music streaming service Pandora in 2018,
• the announcement by Chinese Tencent Holdings of an IPO of its Tencent Music Entertainment Group at the New York Stock Exchange,
• the enactment of the US Music Modernization Act
• and the fight over Article 13 of the pending EU Copyright Directive.

Book review: The Economics of Music by Peter Tschmuck

My new book “The Economics of Music” is now avaiable in the bookstores. “The Economics of the Music” is a concise, scientifically grounded textbook on the economic fundamentals of the music industry in particular and the music economy in general. It aims to highlight the economic principles that govern the music business by analysing music as an economic good that is protected by copyright law. The book therefore includes a chapter on the microeconomics of music as well as a chapter on the economics of music copyright that is mainly based on findings of institutional economics. The main parts of the book focus on the different sectors of the music industry – music publishing, sound recording, the live music market, and secondary markets such as media and advertising – in order to explain the network of actors in those sectors and how these markets are organised and linked. The music labour markets are treated in a separate chapter. It highlights different income streams for musicians, occupational careers in the music business, and music-related occupations in the wider music economy (education, advocacy, lobbying, etc.). Since digitization has a tremendous impact on the music business, a final chapter on the “Digital Music Business” highlights the new rules, structures, and processes that were established by the digital revolution in order to foreground the structural break the music economy underwent. The last chapter, therefore, refers back to the opening chapter on “A Short Economic History of the Music Business,” which provides an overview from music patronage  to the current digital music economy.

Peter Tschmuck, 2017, The Economics of Music. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Agenda Publishing.

Hardback £55.00 | $70.00 ISBN 9781911116073

Paperback £16.00 | $23.00 ISBN 9781911116080

e-book £16.00 | $23.00 ISBN 9781911116097

Buy a book copy here: Agenda Publishing

Call-for-Papers: 8th Vienna Music Business Research Days, September 12-14, 2017

The 8th Vienna Music Business Research Days will be held at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna/Austria) from 12-14 September 2017. The overall topic of the next conference is the question “Unchaining the Digital Music Business?”. Digitization of the music industry has not reduced the market and gatekeeping power of the industry’s intermediaries as predicted by the long-tail and disintermediation hypotheses. However, it seems that the digital music business has become a blockbuster business with new powerful players appearing on the scene (e.g. Apple, Google/YouTube, Amazon). However, innovations such as the blockchain technology again challenge the newly established value-added network by providing tools for artists to circumvent intermediaries. Thus, the 8th Vienna Music Business Resarch Days will highlight the current developments with new research findings.

The call-for-papers for the conference track day on September 13, 2017 encourage all researchers (from post-doc level on) to submit paper proposals on the broad field of music business research including for e.g.:

• Past, current and future developments in the music industry (recorded music industry, live music sector, music publishing, music retailing and wholesaling, music instruments industry etc.);
• Music market research and music charts research;
• The economic and social situation of musicians as well as the labor market for musicians;
• The management of musicians and music institutions;
• Gender and diversity in the music business;
• The marketing of music;
• Music branding and sponsoring;
• Public and private funding of the music sector (including new forms of music funding such as crowdfunding);
• Case studies on music companies and other music institutions;
• Legal aspects of the music business (contracts, copyright, competition law/policy etc.);
• Music licensing and collecting societies;
• Music media (radio, TV, online-based media etc.);
• Economic aspects of music genres (classical, pop/rock, jazz, world music markets etc.);
• Business-related music education;
• Music export;
• etc.

Please send an abstract of your proposal to vmbrdays@gmail.com no later than March 31, 2017.

 

Other important dates:

May 15, 2017: Notification of acceptance

July 31, 2017: Submission deadline for full papers

September 13, 2017: Conference track day

September 14, 2017: Conference day for invited speakers on “Unchaining the Digital Music Business?”

 

Registration:

Registration fee – early bird (until July 31, 2017): 175,- Euro

Registration fee:                                                    225,- Euro

End of registration (no refund after this date):      August 31, 2017

 

For students at all levels of the MA & PhD a doctoral colloquium (7^th Young Scholars’ Workshop) will be held as part of the 8^th Vienna Music Business Research Days on September 12, 2017. Find a separate call for papers here.

 

Contact:

Dagmar Abfalter (mailto: vmbrdays@gmail.com)

Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM)

University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna

Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna, Austria

Tel.: +43-1-71155-3418

Call-for-Papers: 7th Young Scholars’ Workshop of the 8th Vienna Music Business Research Days, September 12, 2017

The Young Scholars’ Workshop, as part of the 8^th Vienna Music Business Research Days (Vienna, Austria), invites once again young researchers to submit paper abstracts of all disciplines exploring questions that help understand economic and managerial problems as well as processes of the music business sector and in the field of music management. There are many questions that call for investigation and need to be discussed in music business research, for example:

• What drives innovation in the music business sector?
• How can we scientifically understand and differentiate music business models?
• What do we know about critical success factors? Have success factors changed over time – and has music business (entrepreneurship) changed in general?
• What rationalities affect this very “personal” industry?
• What does it mean to be self-managed in the music business?
• What can we learn about the customer’s willingness to pay for music recordings or related goods?
• Who will control the future music market, e.g., startups or Apple?
• How can we understand the role of brands and the music industry?
• And how can music business research support efforts for innovative business models?
• What issues of gender, class or “race” exist in a music business context? How are they dealt with?

 

These research questions are not exhaustive, papers may also address other aspects.

The workshop organizers Prof. Dr. Carsten Winter (Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media) and Prof. Dr. Peter Tschmuck (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna) strongly encourage submissions from students at all levels of MA & PhD. Students are supposed to work on their MA or PhD thesis and discuss it with senior researchers of music business research.

Abstracts (of about 1,000 characters) are due by March 31, 2017, and full papers (15-30 pages) are due by July 31, 2017. Only abstracts and papers submitted on time will be considered.

A maximum of 6-8 papers will be selected for presentation to guarantee a workshop atmosphere. The sessions will combine paper presentations and discussions including interactive elements. Information on the acceptance of the paper proposal will be sent until May 15, 2017, at the latest.

Please email your submission to viennamusicresearch@hmkw.de

Paper proposals and final papers must be submitted as pdf documents and should include contact information, at least affiliation, e-mail address, telephone number and postal address of the author(s).

 

For researchers on the post-doc level a separate call-for-papers for the conference track day on September 13, 2017 can be found here.

 

 

 

Call for Papers: 7th Vienna Music Business Research Days 2016

The 7^th Vienna Music Business Research Days will be held at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria, from September 27 to 29, 2016.

Music Business Research is an inter-discipline at the intersection of economic, artistic, cultural, social, legal, technological and further developments which contribute to the creation/production, dissemination/ distribution and reception/consumption of music. This interdisciplinary nature calls for methodological multiplicity and is open to scholars from all scientific areas.

The conference organizers invite scholars (from the postdoctoral level on) who have a research focus on music business/industry related topics to submit a paper proposal for the conference day on September 28, 2016.

Indicative themes on all music business research areas, include, but not limited to:

• Self-management and career development (institutional and private) of music artists
• Past, current and future developments in the music industry (recorded music industry, live music sector, music publishing, music retailing and wholesaling, music instruments industry etc.);
• Music market research and music charts research;
• The economic and social situation of musicians as well as the labor market for musicians;
• The management of musicians and music institutions;
• The marketing of music;
• Music branding and sponsoring;
• Public and private funding of the music sector (including new forms of music funding such as crowdfunding);
• Case studies on music companies and other music institutions;
• Legal aspects of the music business (contracts, copyright, competition law/policy etc.);
• Music licensing and collecting societies;
• Music media (radio, TV, online-based media etc.);
• Economic aspects of music genres (classical, pop/rock, jazz, world music markets etc.);
• Business-related music education;
• Music export;

Gender issues are welcome and can be included in almost every research topic mentioned above.

 

Submission

Please send an abstract of your proposal to vmbrdays@gmail.com no later than April 30, 2016.

All submissions must include a Title, Authors (names, affiliations, e-mails of all authors and a notation (*) of the corresponding author), an abstract of 1,000-1,500 words and 3-5 keywords. Abstracts must be submitted in English, as a MS Word file (*.doc or *.docx) or *.pdf file, and include:

• Objectives of the research
• Brief description of the disciplinary/theoretical context/background
• Research questions and/or hypotheses
• Methodology
• Main or expected conclusions / contribution
• Main references

Abstracts will be subject to a double-blind peer-review process by an international jury, and authors will be notified of acceptance by June 01, 2016.

Final papers should not exceed 7,000 words (including abstracts, figures, tables, references and appendices) and follow the author guidelines of the International Journal of Music Business Research (IJMBR). The best paper will be offered publication in IJMBR.

Creative Mornings Vienna – Revolutions in the Music Industry

On June 26, 2015, the Creative Mornings Vienna were devoted to the topic “revolution”. I had the honor to talk about the “Revolutions in der Music Industry” at University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. For those who did not read my book “Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry” yet, can enjoy a short YouTube video version on the Jazz revolution, Rock ‘n’ Roll revolution and the current digital revolution in der music industry: “Revolution in the Music Industry – Creative Mornings Vienna, June 26, 2015”.

You can find more on the concept of the international breakfast lecturing series here: http://creativemornings.com/

International Journal of Music Business Research – April 2015, vol. 4, no. 1

The April issue of the International Journal of Music Business Business Research is now available online. This special issue – edited by Martin Lücke (professor at Macromedia University of Applied Sciences Berlin) and Carsten Winter (professor at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media – focuses on the German music economy. In the first article, Helmut Scherer & Carsten Winter (both full professors at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media) discuss success factors for music-based crowdfunding in Germany. Ronny Gey (University Jena), Frank Schumacher, Stephan Klingner (both University Leipzig) and Bettina Schasse de Araujo (Institute for Applied Informatics) highlight the conflict between artistic and economic rationales in a shrinking recorded music market that negatively affects creative and innovative processes in the music industry. In the third article David-Emil Wickström (Pop Academy Baden-Württemberg), Martin Lücke and Anita Jóri (both Macromedia University of Applied Sciences Berlin) discuss the higher education of musicians and music industry workers within the field of Popular Music in Germany.

Volume 4, no 1, April 2015 – special issue on the German Music Economy

Editorial by Martin Lücke & Carsten Winter, pp. 4-8

Helmut Scherer & Carsten Winter: Success factors for music-based crowdfunding as a new means of financing music projects, pp. 9-25

Ronny Gey, Frank Schumacher, Stephan Klingner & Bettina Schasse de Araujo: Buried by administration: How the music industry loses its creativity. An empirical study of German music labels and publishers, pp. 26-54

David-Emil Wickström, Martin Lücke & Anita Jóri: The higher education of musicians and music industry workers in Germany, pp. 55-88

Music Business Research 2013 – in retrospective

 

Dear readers of the music business research blog,

The take-over of EMI’s recorded music arm by Universal Music Group was still on the agenda in 2013. The EU Commission ordered Universal Music to divest EMI Recording Ltd. (including EMI’s Parlophone label group, with the exception of the Beatles), Chrysalis (but without the Robbie Williams catalogue) and Mute Records, EMI and Virgin Classical as well as the local EMI branches in France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Czech Republic/Slovakia and Universal Greece. Thus, the Parlophone Music Group was sold to Warner Music for GBP 487m. The EU Commission eventually cleared the deal in May 2013.

2013 was also the year of booming music streaming services. Led by Spotify, music streaming services reported a growing number of users and increasing revenues. The market entry of Apple with iTunes Radio and Google with All Access raised the expectations of a turnaround in the recorded music market. In the series of six blog entries “Is Streaming the Next Big Thing?”, I tried to assess if these expectations are legitimate from the labels’, artists’, consumers’ and streaming services’ perspective on the basis of an international market analysis.

The booming music streaming market was the perfect starting point for the 4^th Vienna Music Business Research Days “The Future of Music Licensing” (June, 20-21, 2013). The role of collecting societies in the digital age was as well discussed as the EU directive on collective rights management and the need for a comprehensive database of music licences. In the course of the VMBR-Days the best paper of the Young Scholars’ Workshop was awarded for the second time. Sisley Maillard of the Université Telecom ParisTech was awarded for her paper “Consumer Information in the Digital Age: Empirical Evidence from the Spillovers in the Music Industry” as well as Francisco Bernardo/Luis Gustavo Martins of the Catholic University of Portugal in Porto for “Disintermediation Effects in the Music Business – A Return to Old Times”. Both papers are considered for publication in the International Journal of Music Business Research (IJMBR).

In 2013, the second volume of the IJMBR was published with two issues in April and October. The special October issue was entirely devoted to the analysis of the Australian music economy:

Volume 2, no 2, October 2013 – special issue on the Australian Music Economy

Editorial by Patrik Wikström and Peter Tschmuck

Guy Morrow: Regulating Artist Managers: An Insider’s Perspective, pp. 8-35

Phillip McIntyre and Gaye Sheather: The Newcastle Music Industry: An Ethnographic Study of a Regional Creative System in Action, pp. 36-60

Diane Hughes, Sarah Keith, Guy Morrow, Mark Evans and Denis Crowdy: What constitutes artist success in the Australian music industries? pp. 60-80

Volume 2, no 1, April 2013

Editorial by Dennis Collopy and Peter Tschmuck

Michael Huber: Music Reception in the Digital Age – Empirical Research on New Patterns of Musical Behaviour, pp. 6-34

Juan D. Montoro-Pons, Manuel Cuadrado García and Trinidad Casasús-Estellés: Analysing the Popular Music Audience. Determinants of Participation and Frequency of Attendance, pp. 35-62

John Fangjun Li: The Development of the Digital Music Industry in China during the First Decade of the 21st Century with Particular Regard to Industrial Convergence, pp. 63-86

 

In the next section you can find a list of all theses & papers which were added to the blog in 2013, but also recently published studies and books related to music business/industry research are listed:

Book Review: “Download!” by Phil Hardy

“Download! How the Internet Transformed the Record Business” by music industry journalist Phil Hardy is a detailed analysis how the majors record companies lost control of the value added chain in the music industry in the digital revolution. He tells the story about self-confident and maybe arrogant music business executives, who had profited from the CD revolution in the 1990s, but were outmanoeuvred by industry outsiders who set up a totally new added value network for recorded music. The once highly profitable record business that attracted investors from other industries in the 1980s and 1990s turned into a laboratory of digitalization with declining record sales, job losses and divestments of pressing plants and distribution networks in the 2000s. “Download!” is, therefore, an important contribution to understand the impact of Internet and new media on the transformation of the recorded music industry.