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The music industries are being reshaped by a fresh round of platform intermediation – one based on MusicTech, social media platforms and user-generated content, live streaming, crowdfunding and gamification. Andrew Leyshon and Allan Watson critically examine this latest wave of new platform music industries and consider how they are influencing music creation, distribution and consumption as well as their wider economic and cultural impact.
Drawing on contemporary case studies and examples, the authors situate this latest wave of innovation within the historical context of earlier rounds of platform reintermediation, which saw the music industries lurch from a file-sharing crisis to the emergence of the major streaming platforms that first halted and then reversed the decline in revenues derived from recorded music. While debates about the moral economy of streaming dominate both media and academic accounts of the music industries, they show that a focus on streaming alone obscures much of the complexity resulting from related and concurrent platform innovations.
The book provides an up to date and comprehensive study of the latest developments in one of the fastest-moving and innovative sectors of the cultural economy.
This book offers an in-depth analysis of platformization and its consequences for the music industries. Rich in empirical evidence, using primary and secondary data, the authors utilize their research on MusicTech start-ups, independent artists, and live streaming musicians, to show that platforms are not neutral technologies, rather they are shaped by the social, economic, and political environments they operate in.
— Paul G. Oliver, Senior Research Associate and Lecturer in Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Edinburgh Napier University
Andrew Leyshon is Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham and a Senior Fellow at Nottingham Trent University.
Allan Watson is Reader in Economic Geography at Loughborough University. He is Chair of the Economic Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society.
1. Introduction
2. Platformization and the recorded music industry
3. Rights and rents in the new platform music industries
4. "MusicTech" and third-wave platform reintermediation
5. Social media and the mobilization of fan enthusiasm
6. Live music, live streaming
7. Digital literacy, data and democratization
8. Conclusion