10.5281/zenodo.546586
https://zenodo.org/records/546586
oai:zenodo.org:546586
Hviid, Morten
Morten
Hviid
University of East Anglia
Jacques, Sabine
Sabine
Jacques
University of East Anglia
Izquierdo Sanches, Sofia
Sofia
Izquierdo Sanches
University of Huddersfield
Digitalisation and intermediaries in the music industry
Zenodo
2017
Copyright
Music industry
Self-publishing
Retailers
2017-03-30
Working paper
10.5281/zenodo.439344
10.5281/zenodo.796254
https://zenodo.org/communities/create
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Prior to digitalisation, the vertical structure of the market for recorded music could be described as a large number of artists [composers, lyricists and musicians] supplying creative expressions to a small number of larger record labels and publishers who funded, produced, and marketed the resulting recorded music to subsequently, sell these works to consumers through a fragmented retail sector. We argue that digitalisation has led to a new structure in which the retail segment has also become concentrated. Such a structure, with successive oligopolistic segments, can lead to higher consumer prices through double marginalisation. We further question whether a combination of disintermediation of the record labels function combined with "self-publishing" by artists, will lead to the demise of powerful firms in the record label segment, thus shifting market power from the record label and publisher segment to the retail segment, rather than increasing the number of segments with market power.