Stage 3 slides

1. Digital disruption in the music industry
#med332

5. The perennial gale of creative
destruction (p84) …
[The] process of industrial mutation
… that incessantly revolutionizes the
economic structure from within,
incessantly destroying the old one,
incessantly creating a new one (p83)

8. <1 billion iOS devices sold

9. 500 million active iTunes accounts

10. 4 billion videos per day
800 million monthly music videos

12. 12

13. 13
Paid-for subscribers: 68m
Ad-supported: 900m
Paid-for subscribers revenue: $2b
Ad-supported revenue: $634m

18. “In the earlier days
of the web many
artists started to
buy into the
disintermediation
theory that that
maybe the
middlemen could
be cut out and we
could all start
selling music
directly to our fans
and we will make
more money.”
David Lowery in
Mulligan, 2015

20. Record label greed
Piracy
Obstinate tech companies

21. ‘because that connection is with
creators of the music, the artists and
songwriters themselves, the sentiment
usually translates into a mistrust of the
actual industry. Perceptions fall into
cliché, of fat cigar smoking record label
executives and devious accountants
determined to squeeze every last
penny out of struggling artists’
- Mulligan, 2015

26. Shawn Fanning

27. Sean Parker

29. First commercial CD October 1982

30. “Digital started with the CD. No one
realized the implications of putting
ones and zeros of data on a disc. Vinyl
had been the best copy protection
technology ever.”
-Martin Goldschmidt in Mulligan,
2015

33. CD-GRAB
A.L. Digital

35. “The early 1990’s was the most profitable the record labels had
ever been. [They] were flush with cash and didn’t know what to
do with the money except buy up every indie in sight. Even after
the threat appeared none of those profits was focused on
meeting the challenge that digital had unleashed. It was not an
issue of resource it was a question of will. The industry to the
end and even today believed it would control distribution. They
refused to understand how technology would morph and change
their business.”
- Roger Faxon, former CEO of EMI

36. Aerosmith
‘Head First’
1994
First commercial download
13.5 million US internet users
Took 60-90 mins

38. 38
1
2
4
8
16

39. 60 million users

42. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel

44. 44
What changed?
• ‘a set of broader cultural forces … have
changed the role of music within society, and
relegated its immediacy and importance
among many of its consumers’
– (Leyshon et al, 2005: 181)

45. 45
Scale of music industry
‘no more than 10 percent of records actually
recoup the money the record industry invests in
its production’ with some companies stating that
the real figure is closer to 3 %
• (Leyshon, 2005: 187)

46. 46
Attitude shifts
1. Developments within the music industry
– Context (clubs; festivals; merchandise)
2. Synergetic marketing of music
– Cross platform tie-ins (X-Factor, Pop Idol)
3. The inability to sustain consumer attention
– Competition for income (games, DVDs, mobiles,
Internet subscriptions)

47. 47
The blame game?
• Industry business model has been in trouble at
least since the 1980s.
– Temporary delay via CD back catalogues
– (Breen, 1995)
• It is easier to blame an external process (piracy)
than to admit the industry itself made a series
of errors?

48. 48
Responses
• ‘Instead of exploring P2P exchange as a
business opportunity, they defined it as a
piratical threat. In doing so, they inadvertently
implied that they had the right to determine how
people apply after-sales use of intellectual
property by re-asserting commercial copyright in
a set of relations that were effectively
deregulated.’
– (Rojek, 2005: 359)

49. 49
Busted?
• RIAA PR own-goal: prosecution of 12 year old Brianna
LaHara (BBC, 10/9/2003)
• Illinois Senator Dick Durbin:
• ‘Are you headed to junior high schools to round up the usual
suspects?’

50. Sue your customers?
50
File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music Than Non-P2P Peers
Source: American Assembly, via Torrentfreak, Oct 2012

51. Jacques Attali, 1976

52. The ‘crisis of proliferation’
Interlinking of money, music and
power

53. “I find it quite strange that I'm struggling to buy a one-bedroom flat in London six
albums into my career, 12 years down the line … The problem is the devaluation of
music as a thing and the fact that people are not interested in paying for it
anymore”
- Al Doyle, Hot Chip/LCD Soundsystem

54. ‘We are now drowning in music … There’s
too much good music out there so making a
living when scarcity is busted is a real
problem’
-George Ergatoudis, BBC, 2015