Power and Ideology

Given that so much discourse presumes the real tangible existence of something called ‘the music industry’, it is useful to conclude Part III of the book with a macro-level cognitive question of industry identity. Williamson and Cloonan (2007) draw attention to the political dangers of defining music as a single industry when it includes so much diversity, being concerned in particular that the recorded music industry is too often treated synonymously with the whole music industry. This view obscures the fact that live music promotion and publishing, for example, have quite different characteristics from recorded music, not least in that they have had diverging economic trajectories in the past 12 years. The authors explore the way that four different groups use industry definitions, either unconsciously or deliberately, to serve their own purpose, namely: trade and representative bodies; media; government; and academics. From this, they report various reasons for refraining from the singular usage of the term ‘music industry’. Three of these are of particular interest here, namely:

• inequality

• conflict

• policy

‘Inequality’ refers to the fear that seeing music as just one industry over-privileges not only the dominant logic of the major record company model, but also a particular structure based on multi-national operations.