Riassunto analitico
There is no doubt that music industry is facing nowadays the most radical transformations of the last century, so much to put again into play the same concept of musical industry, often assimilated to devices and phonographic processes. Analyzing such changes requires a widening in the perspective of reference, catching both the complexity and variety of the factors involved in order to measure the changed dimension. It’s a revolution started at the beginning of the eighties with the advent of digital technologies and that aims at not changing the world but rather its perception. Music is both a recording art of whom it is possible to observe the final product, that is to say recorded music and a performing art enjoyable live as concerts. (D’Amato, 2009) Certainly, the entire music industry represents an important element and market of the vast media sector and entertainment and as such, has been influenced by the technological introduction of new production processes and contents as well as new telecommunication channels. This has determined for the industry a big transformation of the inner structure and of the relationships with external actors setting the issue of modify productive and distributive cycles and the ways of music consumption defending itself at the same time from external threatens and widespread of music piracy. To better understand this revolutionary process, we should ask first of all what we mean for music industry? Which are the processes that define it and how they have evolved historically? On which assets and cultures are based the current transformations and which are their possible directions? During this chapter, we’ll try to give an answer detecting and explaining the crucial points that determine the current structure of the industry. The historical background, from the invention of the first phonograph to the music dematerialization that is characterizing the current panorama, is important for clarifying which have been the trends and transformation that have brought to the crisis the sector is facing. The one of the music industry production chain is a sector composed by several actors, interconnected among them, that work in an oligopoly vertically differentiated. As a consequence, the market is highly concentrated being divided among few big companies, the Majors or better known as the Big three (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music) that own almost the 70% of the market share. The remaining part of the market is occupied by the so-called Indies, record labels that share a different approach and philosophy compare to majors, for the development of artists and their music. One can think at Majors and Indies as completely rivals in the market, but ss we’ll see later on in the work, the recording industry does not always follow established patterns of ownership, operation and distribution. It is true that there are definite distinctions between the various players, functions and activities within the industry but often there is a considerable crossover and integration between one activity and another. Moreover, the recent literature (ex. Ardizzone 2010) has outlined the music industry starting from a larger perspective that identify a big industry, that includes the small one and other economic activities complementary to the production process both upstream and downstream and a small industry responsible for the execution of three important function of the chain: production, intermediation and consumption of music. From a general description of the music production chain, the focus will be then moved to the Italian context to understand, with the help of stats and data, the performance of the single elements composing the industry with an overview on it as a whole.
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