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Evolution of Digital Music Services

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Digital Revolution Tamed

Abstract

This chapter presents the detailed process of innovation involved in the evolution of digital music services. It describes the trials and errors that digital music firms experienced in trying to find a commercially viable business model in the digital era. This chapter is composed of four parts: (1) an early history of the digital music service building process after Napster was closed down, (2) iTunes’ achievements and limitations, (3) YouTube and Last.fm’s attempts to valorise digital music and their limitations and (4) the decline of the anticipated P2P technology, and the growth of streaming services has emerged as a new form of digital music consumption platform.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Recording Industry Association of America, et al. v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc., 180 F.3d at 1076.

  2. 2.

    See Hiatt (2002) or Hill (2018) for more information on each of the four services.

  3. 3.

    A non-profit organisation established in 1998 in the UK to represent the independent record labels’ interests. The American Association of Independent Music (“A2IM”) is a sister organisation in the USA.

  4. 4.

    Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a US copyright law signed in 1998. It amended the previous copyright law, Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 (DPRA) and included webcasting as part of sound performance licensing scheme (Craft 2001; Delchin 2004; Lane 2011).

  5. 5.

    Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief and Damages ||2,10, Viacom Int’l, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., No. 1:08-cv-02103 (LLS), 2007 WL 775611 (S.D.N.Y. 13 March 2007).

  6. 6.

    Lately, this has become subject of debate around “the value gap” in which YouTube’s low royalty payout is considered problematic as it does not increase in proportion to the stream rate (UK Music 2016; IFPI2017).

  7. 7.

    Google introduced paid services with Google Play in 2013, and YouTubeRed in 2015. Google Play Music featuring podcast streaming and online music locker and YouTubeRed is a subscription-based music service enabling subscribers to listen to music without the interruption of the advertisements and data charges. Despite the vast user base, the number of paid users even when subscribers of the two services combined still is far behind its market leaders such as Spotify and Apple Music (Gensler 2017).

  8. 8.

    Piracy is briefly mentioned in IFPI (2017) report to discuss the changing climate of digital music business in China where piracy is declining with the increasing growth of the legal music business.

  9. 9.

    Samuel (2014) distinguishes the history of recorded music into four phases grouped by the unique features of each phase. Phase I (up to 1983) is Physical Analogue with cassettes, LPs, singles and 8-tracks; Phase II (1984–2003) is Physical Digital with CDs; moving into the “New World of Music”, Phase III (2004–2007) is Online Downloads, i.e. downloads from the Internet; and Phase IV (2008 onwards) is Online Streaming.

  10. 10.

    Marshall (2015) groups current digital music services into three types: streaming radio (webcasting), locker services and on-demand streaming.

  11. 11.

    The four companies were chosen based Mulligan (2017a)’s streaming market share analysis.

  12. 12.

    A detailed analysis of Spotify’s business development is discussed in Chapter 5.

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Sun, H. (2019). Evolution of Digital Music Services. In: Digital Revolution Tamed. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93022-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93022-0_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93021-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93022-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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