Friday 19 July 2013

Is music ownership dead?

Considering the rise in the popularity of vinyl, it's a hard one to call.

A good place to start thinking about this seriously is a look at Wikstrom's (2012) paper (linked here). You might recognise the name from one of the recommended books on this blog, his 2009 title 'The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud' (second edition due later this year).

In his 2012 paper, Wikstrom introduces three distinct music distribution models:

Ownership

Access

Context

He explains that the music industry is moving away from ownership models to context models, citing recent examples of enterprising artists who do things differently to give fans room to 'do things' and not simply consume. 

The article calls to mind 'Artist autonomy in a digital era: The case of Nine Inch Nails' (Brown, 2011) which was explored in some depth on this blog, exploring how to 'increase the value' of music.

With the rise of broadband penetration, smartphones (including all-you-can-eat data), cloud storage and subscription services, the concept of music ownership is indeed one which is changing.

Who knows where we will end up.

It's an interesting though, given the recent debate surrounding Spotify as a weak business model for new artists.

Tweets @musicpiracyblog

References

Brown, S.C. (2011). Artist autonomy in a digital era: The case of Nine Inch Nails. Empirical Musicology Review, 6(4), 198-213

Wikstrom, P. (2009). The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Wikstrom, P. (2012). A Typology of Music Distribution Models. International Journal of Music Business Research, 1(1), 7-20.



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