"This book is a sequel to my father's American Popular Music and its Business - the First 400 Years, also published by Oxford. It compares the music business to a funnel through which money spent by consumers and licensees flows before reaching performers and songwriters after deducting the cost of financing, managing, promoting, and marketing. It also traces how the unfurling digital age affected the delivery of music from analog vinyl and tape to digital successors from CDs to MP3s, to subscription streaming. The Big Six ...
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"This book is a sequel to my father's American Popular Music and its Business - the First 400 Years, also published by Oxford. It compares the music business to a funnel through which money spent by consumers and licensees flows before reaching performers and songwriters after deducting the cost of financing, managing, promoting, and marketing. It also traces how the unfurling digital age affected the delivery of music from analog vinyl and tape to digital successors from CDs to MP3s, to subscription streaming. The Big Six major label groups consolidated to the Big Three by 2020. The merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster completed the transition of ticketing from paper electronic to digital. Technology including the internet, smartphones, broadband, and social media platforms facilitated the management of the metadata emanating from the all-important relationship between consumers and creators, for without this relationship, there is no music business. The book has three main sections spanning 1985 to 1995, 1996 until 2006, and 2007 through 2019. Each has five chapters starting with "The Game of Musical Thrones" about the competition between record labels. "Records, Retail, Radio and the Charts That Bind Them" examines the revenue generated by record sales and radio airplay. Then comes "Publishing, Copyright Litigation, and Legislation", "The Creators of Music - Getting Paid", and "The Consumer - From Whom and How the Money Flows". Finally an epilogue covers the effects of COVID-19 in 2020 on all involved closing with a glimpse into the crystal ball of the digital future"--
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