Music industry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The music industry is a term used to describe a range of music-related businesses and organizations. When term "music industry" is used in a narrow sense, it refers only to the businesses and organizations that record, produce, publish, distribute, and market recorded music (e.g., music publishers, recording industry, record production companies). This corresponds to the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) that includes sound recording and music publishing activities (J-59).

When the term is used more broadly, it refers to a range of sub-industries that come from a number of different industrial classifications, including Information and Communication (which includes sound recording and music publishing activities), programming and broadcasting activities (e.g., radio stations), education (e.g., music training schools), Arts, entertainment and recreation, and manufacturing and retail sales (e.g., of musical instruments). In this broader sense, the term usually also encompasses not-for-profit organizations such as Musicians' Unions and writers' copyright collectives and performance rights organisations.

1 Elements
2 History
3 Distribution
4 Further reading
5 Music industry organizations

[edit] Elements

The music industry is made up of various elements, including:

musicians such as singers
musical ensembles
Musicians' Unions
composers and songwriters
publishers
writers' copyright collectives and performance rights organisations like ASCAP and BMI (or MCPS and PRS respectively for the UK)
record industry ("record" in this context means sound recordings in fixed form, be they tangible or digital)
- record producers
- record manufacturers
- record labels
- record distributors
A&R
band managers
tour promoters
bookers
roadies

[edit] History

Until the 1700s, the process of composition and printing of music was mostly supported by patronage from the aristocracy and church. In the mid-to-late 1700s, performers and composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began to seek commercial opportunities to market their music and performances to the general public. After Mozart's death, his wife (the soprano Constanze Weber) continued the process of commercialization of his music through an unprecedented series of memorial concerts, selling his manuscripts, and a collaborating with her second husband, Georg Nissen, on a biography of Mozart. [1]

[edit] Distribution

In the 1800s, the music industry was dominated by sheet music publishers. In the United States, the music industry arose in tandem with the rise of blackface minstrelsy. The group of music publishers and songwriters which dominated popular music in the United States was known as Tin Pan Alley. In the early 20th century the phonograph industry grew greatly in importance, and the record industry eventually replaced the sheet music publishers as the industry's largest force.

Just as radio and television did before it, the advent of file sharing technologies may change the balance between record companies, song writers, and performing artists. Bands such as Metallica have fought back against peer-to-peer programs such as the infamous Napster, and the arguments for and against technology to circumvent them - digital rights management systems - remain controversial.

With the re-launch of Napster as a legally licensed download site in 2003 (in the US), along with the advent of Apple Computer's iTunes online music store in the same year, the Major record companies have begun to embrace digital downloading as the future of the music industry.

Both Napster and iTunes, with the support of the majors, are promoting a digital music subscription service. This may lead to a fundamental change in the way music is consumed, as a utility that "flows" into a person's house rather than as a commodity that is bought one-by-one. Music may well become purchased 'like water' (Leonhard, 2004), in that people will pay for their monthly consumption of music, and the industry will finally become consumer-led rather than industry-led.

[edit] Further reading

Norman Lebrecht, When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music, Simon & Schuster 1996
Christian Imhorst, The ‘Lost Generation’ of the Music Industry, published under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License 2004
Gerd Leonhard, Music Like Water - the inevitable music ecosystem, [2], 2004
The Methods Reporter, Music Industry Misses Mark with Wrongful Suits