Roger Wallis

Music in Electronic Markets: An Empirical Study

Music plays an important, and sometimes overlooked part in the transformation of communication and distribution channels. With a global market volume exceeding US

The Changing Location of Intellectual Property Rights in Music: A Study of Music Publishers, Collecting Societies and Media Conglomerates

40 billion, music is not only one of the primary entertainment goods in its own right. Since music is easily personalized and transmitted, it also permeates many other services across cultural borders, anticipating social and economic trends. This article presents one of the first detailed empirical studies on the impact of internet technologies on a specific industry. Drawing on more than 100 interviews conducted between 1996 and 2000 with multinational and independent music companies in 10 markets, strategies of the major players, current business models, future scenarios and regulatory responses to the online distribution of music files are identified and evaluated. The data suggest that changes in the music industry will indeed be far-reaching, but disintermediation is not the likely outcome.

Contested Collective Administration of Intellectual Property Rights in Music The Challenge to the Principles of Reciprocity and Solidarity

This article reports the results of a major study, conducted between 1996 and 1999, examining the impact of de-regulation and digital technologies on the global music industry. We analyse four negotiations in the process of bringing music to the world market: commodification, globalisation, delivery, and royalty management. We show that the location of intellectual property rights in this process depends on the mutual bargaining power of the parties involved, within a statutory frame vesting music copyright initially in the author. We describe the forces which have led to the appropriation of rights accounting for 80% of global publishing and recording revenues by only five companies: EMI (UK), Bertelsmann (Germany), Warner (US), Sony (Japan) and Universal (Canada). We predict that this regime will not last and consider the likely future location of intellectual property rights in music.

COPYRIGHT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: CATALYST OR BARRIER?

Individual intellectual property right holders in music cannot easily enforce their statutory claims to exclusive usage and remuneration. Since the middle of the 19th century, composers and publishers have responded by creating collective bodies, so-called collecting societies which monitor musical activity in a given territory, and collect and distribute fees accordingly. These societies, first established in Western Europe, operate on two principles: the principle of reciprocity, linking monopolistic national societies and the principle of solidarity, making a collecting service available to all right holders at roughly the same rate. The rise of the global media corporation combined with new digital production and distribution technologies has seriously undermined these principles. The article reports recent trends drawing on over 30 interviews with executives of the five largest multinational music firms and the major copyright institutions in Germany, Japan, Sweden and the UK, including the European Commission, the World Intellectual Property Organization and national and international trade bodies. We conclude that the present structure of music copyright is likely to collapse, skewing the distribution of revenues in favour of big corporate players and global musical products if there is no institutional intervention. Policy implications are discussed.

Key to the highway

The paper critically revisits the theory of entrepreneurship giving particular weight to the economic, business and sociological meaning of the term. It supports the position that the creator should be thought of as an entrepreneur, i.e. somebody who not only creates but who is also, or even primarily, aiming to exploit his/her creation to appropriate rent. The paper tries to build a theoretical framework to facilitate research in the cultural industries using the concepts of disequilibrium, entrepreneurial opportunity and rent, and intellectual property rights. We assess the disruptive role of new technologies in the music industry and examine the role of copyright as an institution that can both hinder or facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation in the digital domain.

The global music industry in the digital environment: a study of strategic intent and policy responses (1996-99)

Record company mergers and intense commercial pressures are making life difficult for existing stars and wannabees alike