The Rise of the Platform Music Industries

The music industry is being reshaped by a fresh round of platform intermediation – one based on MusicTech, social media platforms and user-generated content, live streaming, crowdfunding and gamification. Leyshon and Watson critically examine this latest wave of new platform music industries and consider how they are influencing music creation, distribution and consumption as well as their wider economic and cultural impact.

Drawing on contemporary case studies and examples from throughout the industry, the authors situate this latest wave of innovation within the historical context of earlier rounds of platform reintermediation, which saw the music industry lurch from a file-sharing crisis to the emergence of the major streaming platforms that first halted and then reversed the decline in revenues derived from recorded music. While debates about the moral economy of streaming dominate both media and academic accounts of the music industries, they show that a focus on streaming alone obscures much of the complexity resulting from related and concurrent platform innovations.

The book provides an up to date and comprehensive study of the latest developments in one of the fastest-moving and innovative sectors of the cultural economy.