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Global Business: The Music Industry

The Music Industry

04/01/2014

BBC World Service - Global Business, The Music Industry

How can musicians make money in an industry that has changed so much in the past decade?

Peter Day investigates how much the music industry has changed in the past decade and asks how businesses and musicians have had to adapt as a result.

The music industry has changed irrevocably over the past decade, with the internet disrupting the status quo as it has many other sectors. But the story has moved on from an industry dying from dwindling record sales. 

The traditional way of releasing a record has changed thanks to new publishing platforms, companies that gather music statistics and streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer. Now these companies are disrupting the industry once again. Peter Day speaks with new players such as Spotify and Musicmetric and traditional, established companies such as Sony Music. 

Streaming services have caused controversy because their payments to musicians are seemingly minuscule. Radiohead’s lead singer Thom Yorke has battled against Spotify, calling it the ‘last fart of a dying corpse’ - so how can musicians make money now? Peter hears from a band just starting out, Yossarian, and from successful artists Billy Bragg and Moby.

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