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…

The 5th Vienna Music Business Research Days will be held at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria, on October 01-03, 2014. 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 October…

The Young Scholars’ Workshop (October 1st, 2014), as part of the 5th 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…

Jim Rogers’ PhD-thesis at Dublin City University was recently published under the title “The Death & Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age” at Bloomsbury/London. He interviewed 30 music business professionals in the UK and Ireland from 2007 to 2010 to answer the main research question if the Internet caused a crisis in…

The question if streaming is the next big thing for the music industry will be eventually answered by the music consumers. Several studies were conducted in past few years – most of them commissioned by music industry bodies – to assess the future potential of music streaming. It is essential for music streaming services and…

In mid of July 2013 Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke caused for controversies when he pulled his song catalogue and those of his band Atoms For Peace from music streaming service Spotify. His straight forward argument was as cited in The Guardian that “new artists get paid fuck all with this model”. Several artists take the…

The Beggars Group chairman, Martin Mills, recently told the Guardian that “(…) 22% of the label group’s digital revenues came from streaming – and that the majority of its artists earn more now from track streams than track downloads” in 2012. Though the article does not report absolute figures, the revenue can be considered rather…

“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…

In the 4th Vienna Music Business Research Days the “Future of Music Licensing” was highlighted. The conference, therefore, focused on collective rights management and collecting societies respectively as well as the registration of music rights. However, in a broader perspective also the future of copyright in a digital society was discussed. In the opening panel…

The scientific collaboration project, ART-e-FACT, will focus on IT-solutions for seamless artefact data process management, free of media discontinuities, in the music industry. The project is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the initiative KMU-Innovativ, for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), launched on 1st of January 2013. For the…

The music streaming market is currently the most dynamic segment in the music industry. The market entry of Apple with iTunes Radio and Google with All Access underpin the relevance of music streaming. It is just a question of time when Amazon will announce the launch of its rumoured music streaming service. Google, Apple &…

The 4th Vienna Musis Business Research Days will be held on the “Future of Music Licensing” in Joseph Haydn Hall at the University of Music Performing Arts Vienna (Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna) from June 20-21, 2013. This international conference gathers scholars from different disciplines, but also business professionals and decision-makers from state and private bodies to…

After years of recession optimism is back in the phonographic industry. In the current Recording Industry in Numbers by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI 2013) the first but small increase of 0.9 percent in global recorded music sales were reported since 1999.The decreases in CD sales and in other physical formats could…

“Music Business and the Experience Economy” is the first book on the music business in Australasia from an academic perspective. In a cross-disciplinary approach, the authors deal with a wide-range of topics concerning the production, distribution and consumption in the digital age. The interrelationship of legal, aesthetic and economic aspects in the production of music…

The new issue of the International Journal of Music Business Research is now online. You can read an article by Michael Huber on “Music Reception in the Digital Age – Empirical Research on New Patterns of Music Behaviour” based on a representative survey of music consumption in Austria. In the article “Analysing the Popular Music…

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the EU Commission recently published a study entitled “Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data” with remarkable results. The authors, Luis Aguiar and Bertin Martens, concluded that music file sharing as well as music streaming have a significant positive impact on legal music downloads. The study…

The study Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People is the third survey of its kind – after 2008 and 2009 – for 2011. After a presentation of the key findings of the study in the 3rd Vienna Music Business Research Days, it’s now an honour and pleasure to exclusively present the results of the current…

Peter DiCola of Northwestern University School of Law and partner in the “Artists Revenue Streams”-project of the “Future of Music Coalition” has recently published a working paper entitled “Money from Music: Survey Evidence on Musicians’ Revenue and Lessons About Copyright Incentives”, which also will be published in the Arizona Law Review. Based on data of…

The “Berlin Music Video Awards” will be awarded for the first time in Berlin from April 24-28, 2013. This event provides a perfect platform for musicians and labels to get in touch with producers of music videos. On the first two days the public and representatives of the music and music video industry will vote…

Dear friends of the music business research blog. Thank you for visiting the blog in 2012. It was again a very eventful year for the music business/industry. The US and EU regulators cleared the merger of the recorded music arms of Universal and EMI. The Anschutz Group announced the selling of AEG, the world’s second…