Digital Music Case Study

Global unit sales of digital music, including compact discs, surpassing that of vinyl and cassettes heralded the beginning of the digital era in the music industry in the 1990s. As a result, the favourable investment opportunity encouraged the development of streaming and downloadable music. Specifically, dominant service providers such as iTunes and Spotify expanded the market to the globe for profit maximization. However, although the majority who lacked profound understandings of music preferred the digital form for easy accessibility regardless of other factors, the popular belief of exceptional quality and traditional style of physical music persisted over time. When the digital music has been proved to reduce the cost of music production, stimulate the demand for higher

Before the ubiquitous Internet was accessible, consumption of analogues was exclusive to physical stores with limited types and stock of music on shelves. Moreover, the action that powerful distributors forcing more tapes of renowned artists onto the shelves was exploitative which led to a substantial slump in the revenue of small record labels and neophytes. After the emergence of digitization, licensed streaming sites and digital download stores performed as the major platforms for yielding profits. To illustrate, iTunes offered simple registration procedures to all labels and artists with unlimited shelf spaces and virtual inventory, which prohibited the unfairness to guarantee a profit. Besides, the Content ID system of YouTube preserved copyrighted music which secured the revenue musicians earned by uploading works with pay music scores and placing adverts without relinquishing the rights to labels. As a result, the new options of music distribution curbed the exploitation of the dominant distributors by protecting the interests of labels and