3.3 C
Dorset
Monday, February 10, 2025
HomeDorset NorthCulture, the Arts & the History - Dorset NorthThe Death and Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age

The Death and Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age

Jim Rogers is a Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer at the School of Communications, Dublin City University, Ireland. Jim’s recent research interests focus on how the music industry has negotiated the transition to digital. It points to many fundamental continuities in terms of how the industry operates, despite the perception of a ‘digital revolution’ bringing transformation to the domain.

Jim is the author of The Death and Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age — a forthcoming book [early 2013] from Bloomsbury Academic. Bloomsbury offers this summary:

“This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the internet is ‘killing’ the music industry. While technological innovations (primarily in the form of peer-to-peer file-sharing) have evolved to threaten the economic health of major transnational music companies, this book illustrates how those same companies have themselves formulated highly innovative response strategies to negate the harmful effects of the internet. In short, it illustrates how the radical transformative potential of the internet is being suppressed by legal and organisational innovations. Grounded in a social shaping perspective, the book contends that the internet has not altered pre-existing power relations in the music industry where a small handful of very large corporations have long since established an oligopolistic dominance. Furthermore, the book contends that widespread acceptance of the idea that online piracy is rampant, and music largely ‘free’ actually helps these major music companies in their quest to bolster their power. In doing this, this book serves to deflate much of the transformative hype and digital ‘deliria’ that has accompanied the internet’s evolution as a medium for mass communication.”

Our interview covers three broad themes:

1. the actual state of the music business amidst the hue and cry over file sharing and the decline of CD sales. More specifically, what are this business’s current practices and profitability?

2. the intersection of music and the technology involved in music making and how that is both distinct from and linked to the technology of computers and the internet. (for example: digital signal processing, midi, hard disk and software based recording, as opposed to: file sharing, hacking, digital distribution via internet, etc.)

3. IP regimes, criminalization of file sharing, assessing “threats”, real and imagined. Is “piracy” a boon or a curse for musicians and audiences? Is copyright doomed? What new opportunities present themselves as a result of the internet? And for whom?

RFE Episode Seven: music, technology and capitalism, an overview of current developments. An interview with Jim Rogers

2. Radio Free Everybody

Download Mp3

Music:

Novalima: Mamaye from the CD Karimba
Kassin & Berna Ceppas: Kapakiao from the CD ComFusoes 1 From Angola to Brazil
Ebo Taylor: Ayesama from the CD Appia Kwa Bridge

This article first appeared in Stir to Action

To report this post you need to login first.
Dorset Eye
Dorset Eye
Dorset Eye is an independent not for profit news website built to empower all people to have a voice. To be sustainable Dorset Eye needs your support. Please help us to deliver independent citizen news... by clicking the link below and contributing. Your support means everything for the future of Dorset Eye. Thank you.

DONATE

Dorset Eye Logo

DONATE

- Advertisment -

Most Popular