Recordings, Rights and Risks: Intermediaries and the Changing Music Industries

The new millennium has seen a proliferation of intermediaries working within, across and out from the music industries, and a rich variety of new working practices and relationships in response to changes in music commerce brought about by digitalisation. Historically, since early in the twentieth century, the music industry has been undergoing a process of adaptation from one core revenue-generating product (recording) towards a system of interdependent commodities whereby market value is realised relatively and cumulatively through connections that link various musical commodities (recordings, still and moving images, dramas, books, games, experiences, events, merchandise, services and so on). As the revenues from direct sale of recordings to consumers has declined and the importance of rights revenue has increased, older risks and uncertainties about musicians and their listeners have been reconfigured, compounded by the cultural consequences of digitalisation, and the waves of data produced via digitalisation. Within this context, music companies have been devolving responsibility for risk by allowing interventions from nation state, civic and commercial intermediaries and drawing into the networks of music production a wider range of investors, regulators, stakeholders, entrepreneurs, activists and beneficiaries.