The COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to meet for the 11th Vienna Music Business Research Days at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Therefore the international conference on “Emerging Music Markets” went online and gathered conference guests from all around the globe to highlight the rising importance of music markets in Asia and Eastern European.
The first online event on September 21 was the 10th Anniversary Young Scholars’ Workshop, which offered a forum for junior scientists to present their master and PhD projects to renowned international music business researchers. Young scholars from Australia, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands discussed their findings with their mentors’ and other workshop participants. At the end of the conference Laura Weinert of the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media was rewarded for the Young Scholars’ Workshop best paper entitled “Music in the mediatised everyday life of young people”. Her contribution is considered to be published in the International Journal of Music Business Research (IJMBR).
The Conference Track Day on September 22 gathered music business researchers from Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, who presented their research findings on a broad range of music business topics, such as digital ecosystems for micro music businesses, the role of fandom in artist promotion, the power of reputation of festival directors, the digital transformation of value creation in the music business and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on music consumption and the live music scene in Germany (see program).
The online conference continued on September 23 with the Invited Conference Day focusing on the main conference topic “Emerging Music Markets”. Bernie Cho, President of the Seoul-based artist & label services agency DFSB Kollective, gave a keynote on the “Hip Hype Reality of the Korean Music Market” and highlighted the hugh economic impact of K-Pop for the Korean but also international music markets. Philipp Grefer, who is the founder of the Beijing-based Future-Think-Tank WISE explained it the next keynote how the Chinese music market developed from more or less nothing into the seventh largest recorded music market worldwide. In the following talk, Achille Forler, who is the managing director of the Indian-based sound design agency Music Curator and member of the advisory board of the Indian Performing Right Society, highlighted the specifities of the Indian music market that is still dominated by the big Bollywood film companies. They all joined Weining Hung, co-founder of the LUCfest in Tainan/Taiwan for the panel discussion on “Emerging Music Markets in Asia” and discussed the growing economic but also cultural impact of Asia in the global music market and music industry.
The virtual afternoon conference session was devoted to Eastern European music markets. Dartsya Tarkovska, founder of music consulting agency Soundbuzz and co-founder of Music Export Ukraine, explained how the Ukrainian recorded music industry is structured and analysed the music streaming market in the Ukraine. Ania Kasperek, who founded the all-female Chimes Agency in Poland, highlighted then the specifities of the Polish music market, before Carina Sava of the Agentia de Vise in Bucharest showed how the Romanian music market works. In the following panel discussion on “Emerging Music Markets in Eastern Europe”, all three speakers highlighted again the differences and similarities of music markets in Central and Eastern Europe and discussed the future potential of these markets.
Continue reading ‘The 11th Vienna Music Business Research Days 2020 in retrospective’
Music Business Research 
Recent commentaries