Music Business Research 2019 – in retrospective

Dear all,

Music streaming has been still on the rise in 2019 as an international market analysis highlights. However, a closer look unveils that in some markets – especially in Scandinavia (part 1, part 2, part 3) – the streaming markets have matured and will be soon saturated. Therefore we can expect a market consolidation in 2020 with some stand-alone music streaming services disappearing. Spotify seems to be “to big to fail”, however, it will rely on strong partners to back the Swedish company in rough sea.

The Universal Music Group (UMG) will have a strong partner in 2020. Today it was announced that a consortium led by Chinese Tencent Holdings will buy up a 10% stake of UMG from the French parent company Vivendi. Since the world`s largest recording company will be partly owned by a Chinese conglomerate this could be a game changer in the music industry and the Chinese recorded music market will become even more relevant for the international music business. This blog will be the place to analyse the new situation.

And Asia will be also in the focus of the 11^th Vienna Music Business Research Days on “Emerging Music Markets”, which will be held from September 21-23, 2020 at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. We expect keynotes on the Chinese, Indian and South Korean music markets as well as short presentations and panel discussion on several Eastern European markets. The call-for-paper for the Young Scholars’ Workshop on Sep. 21 and the Conference Track Day on Sep. 22 are already open for submissions of abstracts.

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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: 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.

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: