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The Music Industry

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.

Available now

29 minutes

Last on

Wed 8 Jan 201415:32GMT

Contributors to this programme

Jeremy Silver

Author of ‘Digital Medieval: the last twenty years of the music industry, and the next twenty’ and Chairman of Musicmetric

Moby

Musician

Billy Bragg

Singer / songwriter

Ash Spencer

Singer - Yossarian

Fred Bolsa

Director of Innovation and Strategy at Sony Music in London

Mark Williamson

Director of Artist Services at Spotify

David Touve

Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, USA

Broadcasts

  • Sat 4 Jan 201412:32GMT
  • Sun 5 Jan 201409:32GMT
  • Wed 8 Jan 201400:32GMT
  • Wed 8 Jan 201404:32GMT
  • Wed 8 Jan 201415:32GMT

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