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The Handbook of Global Music Industries offers an ambitious and timely account of the contemporary music industries as a dynamic, globally interconnected field shaped by technological transformation, shifting labour conditions, platform economies, cultural policy, and changing forms of musical production and circulation. Bringing together an international group of established and emerging scholars, the collection provides a wide-ranging exploration of the structures, practices, and debates that increasingly define music industries research in the twenty-first century.
The contributing authors address multiple dimensions of the music industries, including artists and managers, recording and publishing, streaming and playlist cultures, live music ecologies, copyright and geopolitics, digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, and the lived realities of creative labour. Particular attention is given to the infrastructures, intermediaries, and power relations that organise contemporary music markets.
Recurring themes include precarity and entrepreneurship, multinational label hierarchies, platform governance, copyright reform, export strategies, discrimination, mental health, and post-pandemic recovery. By combining structural analysis with grounded empirical research, the collection offers a globally situated account of how platform logics and enduring inequalities continue to shape contemporary music industries.
Distinguished by its genuinely global perspective, the handbook moves beyond narrowly Anglo-American frameworks to examine music industries as diverse, uneven, and contested cultural formations operating across multiple geographic, economic, and institutional contexts. Its scope reflects the growing recognition that the music industries can no longer be understood through singular models of production or distribution, but instead require sustained engagement with questions of globalisation, digital mediation, labour, infrastructure, governance, entrepreneurship, live performance, and cultural value.
The collection combines broad disciplinary reach with a strong awareness of emerging developments within the field. Across its chapters, it addresses the rapidly changing conditions of music production and circulation while also engaging critically with the wider economic and political forces shaping contemporary cultural work. Questions of inequality, platform power, precarity, access, and sustainability sit alongside discussions of innovation, participation, audience formation, and industrial transformation, producing a volume that is both analytically rigorous and responsive to contemporary debates.
Structured to support both specialist scholarship and interdisciplinary engagement, the handbook is designed to function simultaneously as a major reference work, a teaching resource, and a framework for future research. Its thematic range and international orientation make it especially relevant to scholars and students working across popular music studies, media and communication, cultural industries, sociology, cultural policy, creative labour, and global media studies.
At a moment when music industries worldwide are undergoing profound structural change, the handbook offers a substantial and intellectually expansive contribution to understanding how music circulates, generates value, organises labour, and shapes cultural life across different global contexts. The result is a collection that positions the study of global music industries not as a narrow subfield, but as a crucial site for examining wider transformations in culture, technology, economics, and power.
Chris Anderton is Associate Professor in the Cultural Economy at Southampton Solent University, UK. His primary research areas are the music industries, live music and festivals, and music history, culture and fandom, especially in relation to progressive music styles.
Martin James, Professor, is an independent scholar based in the UK. His areas of specialist interest include the UK and US music press, and late twentieth-century alternative music, specifically punk, post-punk and electronic music.
Daniel Nordgård is Professor in Music Industries and Digitalization. His primary research is on digital transitions in the global music industries, focusing on music ecosystems, business models, rights structures and digital platforms.
Sergio Pisfil is a Lecturer and Researcher in Music at Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC), Peru. His primary research areas include live sound, live music studies, and the history of rock music.
List of Figures
List of Tables
Introduction: Perspectives on Global Music Industries
Chris Anderton, Daniel Nordgård and Sergio Pisfil
PART I ARTISTS, SONGWRITERS AND MANAGERS
- Global Music Industries – in the Groove or in a Rut?
Michael L. Jones
- ‘It’s Kind of Like a Game of Snakes and Ladders’: The Negotiation of Creativity, Collaboration and Career Opportunities in the Publishing of Professional Songwriters
Ingrid M. Tolstad and Anja Nylund Hagen
- Melodies Across Borders: Unravelling Collaborative Dynamics within Global Networks of Songwriters
Liucija Fosseli
- Rethinking Prosumption in Music Production
Pat O’Grady
- Artist Management: Managing Relationships within the Relationship-based Music Industries.
Yiyi Wang
- Reward Management in the Music Industries: Music Artists and their Employment of Music Artist Managers
Guy Morrow
PART II RECORDING AND PUBLISHING
- Adapt and Survive: the Precarity of Independent Music Entrepreneurship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Npaujnpaim Diana Lee and Adil Johan
- Multinational Labels in Peru: Between Local Markets and Regional Hierarchies
Sergio Pisfil and Juan Alberto Mata
- Legislative Remedies for Legacy Performers: Rights Reversion and Contract Adjustment
Richard Osborne
- ‘The Tools Come with Baggage’: Digital Capitalism and the Artist-centric Discourse of Music Entrepreneurship
Tom Wagner
- ‘We Do Not Accept Unsolicited Demos’. Talent Scouting in the 2020s
Massimiliano Raffa
PART III MEDIATION AND CIRCULATION
- Music Diversity in the Age of Streaming Services: Domestic Music Genres in the Digital Music Industry in Brazil
Leonardo De Marchi and Leonardo Morel
- The Role of the Miami Transnational Phonographic Industry in the Production and Global Circulation of Latin Music: Industrial Strategies and Power Relations
Alix Bénistant
- Making a Statement: Music Making Innovation in the English Caribbean
Erica K. Smith
- Playlistable Sounds. Music Producers and Platform Optimization
Riccardo Pronzato and Massimiliano Raffa
- Resisting the Datafication of Music Cultures on Social Media: Insights from the Use of Facebook in Estonia
Madis Järvekülg
PART IV LIVE MUSIC
- Creative and Emergent Modes: a Conceptual Map of Online Musical Performances in the 21st Century
Julian Knowles, Diane Hughes and Andrew Robson
- Mapping Live Music Urban Ecologies – Potential and Challenges
Patrycja Rozbicka, Adam Behr and Mathew Flynn
- Back to Business: The Resilience of the Live Music Ecosystem Before and After COVID
Erik Hitters, Martijn Mulder and Pauwke Berkers
- Seeing and Hearing: How Crisis Informs Research on Norwegian Light and Sound Engineers
Daniel Nordgård and Øystein Flemmen
- Observing the Music Venue: a Case Study of the Challenges of Developing Consistent and Comparable Data
Mathew Flynn and Richard Anderson
PART V MUSIC POLICY
- The Geopolitics of Copyright and Piracy: US Policy and Copyright Imperialism
Chris Anderton
- Music, Platforms and Copyright: Exploring Power Dynamics in the Digital Age
Arthur Ehlinger and Amy Thomas
- Making Record Contracts FAIR
David Arditi
- Music Export Offices as an Attempt to Overcome Inequalities in the Global Music Market
Patryk Galuszka
- Costing the Music Industries: a Case Study of Working with Welsh Government
Paul Carr
PART VI DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
- Digital Innovations in the Music Industry and their Effects on the Emerging Markets of Nigeria and Ghana
Kenechukwu Obinna Ofochebe
- China’s Digital Music Industry: Digital Conglomerates and Business Models
Zhian Zhao and Yingzixuan Zhang
- ‘It Sucks but This is the New Reality’: the Value of a Stream
Steve Collins, Sarah Keith, Adrian Renzo and Alex Mesker
- Artists, Creator Tools and the Dichotomy of AI as Assistant and as Competitor
Hussein Boon
- Observations on the Role of Copyright in Shaping Music Industry Use of Large Language Models
Daniel Gervais
PART VII WORKING IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRIES
- The Portfolio Music Career: Understanding the Australian experience
Christina Ballico
- The Melbourne Music Business Scene: Desired Social Experiences and Scenic Articulation in an Australian Capital City
Ian Rogers, Catherine Strong and Fabian Cannizzo
- Perspectives of Rural Performers in a Global Industry: the Shifting Landscape of Career Progression for Popular Music Performers
Angela Young
- Mental Health Among Singer-Songwriters in the German Music Business
Melanie Ptatscheck
- ‘It Only Changed Because I Walked Away’: Experiences of Discrimination and Microaggressions in the Recording Studio
Monica Lockett and Athena Elafros
- Sex, Power and Entertainment: the Role of Strategic Sexual Performances in the Music Industry
David R. Schreiber and Nadine T. Perrero
Contributor Biographies
Index