The digital music revolution and the rise of piracy cultures has transformed the music world as we knew it. Digital Music Distribution aims to go beyond the polarized and reductive perception of ‘piracy wars’ to offer a broader and richer understanding of the paradoxes inherent in new forms of distribution. Covering both production and consumption perspectives, Spilker analyses the changes and regulatory issues through original case studies, looking at how digital music distribution has both changed and been changed by the cultural practices and politicking of ordinary youth, their parents, music counter cultures, artists and bands, record companies, technology developers, mass media and regulatory authorities. Exploring the fundamental change in distribution, Spilker investigates paradoxes such as: The criminalization of file-sharing leading not to conflicts, but to increased collaboration between youths and their parents; Why the circulation of cultural content, extremely damaging for its producers, has instead been advantageous for the manufacturers of recording equipment; Why more artists are recording in professional sound studios, despite the proliferation of good quality equipment for home recording; Why mass media, hit by many of the same challenges as the music industry, has been so critical of the way it has tackled these challenges. A rare and timely volume looking at the changes induced by the digitalization of music distribution, Digital Music Distribution will appeal to undergraduate students and policy makers interested in fields such as Media Studies, Digital Media, Music Business, Sociology and Cultural Studies.

This Book is a comprehensive study of the music industry distribution system. The intent is to convey total understanding of the process of music distribution as well as the significance of that process and all it's variables. Marketing through cutting-edge web-technology and how to incorporate into digital and retail distribution networks supporting soundscan capabilities, is discussed. Distribution is but one aspect of the business end of this industry, arguably the most vital. The importance of distribution is stressed along with the importance of other contiguous aspects such as global sales, marketing and promotions including radio-internet radio, retail, trades, music aggregators, street-promotions, and college-networks. This edition includes current industry statistics, trends and new innovative ways in selling your music through both digital and physical. Focus on additional revenue streams as licensing, publishing, digital download cards with Soundscan support is also examined.

Whether you want to start a record label, self-release your own music, or are just an avid music lover, this book will give you information about the business of music. The Label Machine: How to Start, Run and Grow Your Own Independent Music Label is the first book to give music artists practical step-by-step comprehensive instructions for setting up and running an independent music label to successfully distribute and market their music. You will learn all about the music industry business and how to navigate the tricky dos and don'ts. You will finally understand and take control of your music copyright and get to grips with the legalities involved. You will build your music business effortlessly, learning how to professionally market your music and artists - allowing you to reach thousands of fans. And essentially, you will learn how to create multiple label revenue streams to create an established record label. It features a detailed breakdown of how every part of the industry works together, including copyright in the UK and US, record label set-up, record releases, and royalty collection. It also provides in-depth guides on marketing, covering; traditional PR, Facebook and Instagram advertising, Spotify playlisting, and fan growth. Includes templates for record label and management contracts, marketing and promotion schedules, press releases, and fan email automation.

The music industry’s ongoing battle against digital piracy is just the latest skirmish in a long conflict over who has the right to distribute music. Starting with music publishers’ efforts to stamp out bootleg compilations of lyric sheets in 1929, Barry Kernfeld’s Pop Song Piracy details nearly a century of disobedient music distribution from song sheets to MP3s. In the 1940s and ’50s, Kernfeld reveals, song sheets were succeeded by fake books, unofficial volumes of melodies and lyrics for popular songs that were a key tool for musicians. Music publishers attempted to wipe out fake books, but after their efforts proved unsuccessful they published their own. Pop Song Piracy shows that this pattern of disobedience, prohibition, and assimilation recurred in each conflict over unauthorized music distribution, from European pirate radio stations to bootlegged live shows. Beneath this pattern, Kernfeld argues, there exists a complex give and take between distribution methods that merely copy existing songs (such as counterfeit CDs) and ones that transform songs into new products (such as file sharing). Ultimately, he contends, it was the music industry’s persistent lagging behind in creating innovative products that led to the very piracy it sought to eliminate.

Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture documents the transition of recorded music on CDs to music as digital files on computers. More than two decades after the first digital music files began circulating in online archives and playing through new software media players, we have yet to fully internalize the cultural and aesthetic consequences of these shifts. Tracing the emergence of what Jeremy Wade Morris calls the “digital music commodity,” Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture considers how a conflicted assemblage of technologies, users, and industries helped reformat popular music’s meanings and uses. Through case studies of five key technologies—Winamp, metadata, Napster, iTunes, and cloud computing—this book explores how music listeners gradually came to understand computers and digital files as suitable replacements for their stereos and CD. Morris connects industrial production, popular culture, technology, and commerce in a narrative involving the aesthetics of music and computers, and the labor of producers and everyday users, as well as the value that listeners make and take from digital objects and cultural goods. Above all, Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture is a sounding out of music’s encounters with the interfaces, metadata, and algorithms of digital culture and of why the shifting form of the music commodity matters for the music and other media we love.

Aimed at songwriters, recording artists, and music entrepreneurs, this text explains the basics of digital music law. Entertainment attorney Gordon offers practical tips for online endeavors such as selling song downloads or creating an Internet radio station. Other topics include (for example) web site building, promoting through peer-to-peer networks, etc.

Music Business and the Experience Economy is the first book on the music business in Australasia from an academic perspective. In a cross-disciplinary approach, the contributions deal with a wide-range of topics concerning the production, distribution and consumption of music in the digital age. The interrelationship of legal, aesthetic and economic aspects in the production of music in Australasia is also highlighted as well as the emergence of new business models, the role of P2P file sharing, and the live music sector. In addition, the impact of the digital revolution on music experience and valuation, the role of music for tourism and for branding, and last but not least the developments of higher music education, are discussed from different perspectives.