Music Sales Research Articles

Impression management through social media: impact on the market performance of musicians’ human brands

PurposeHuman brands in the music industry use self-presentation tactics on social media to manage audience impressions. This practice has led to many posts asking followers to adopt behaviors favoring the human brand. However, its effectiveness in leveraging relevant performance metrics for musicians outside social media, such as popularity in specialized media, music sales and number of contracted concerts, needs further exploration. This study aims to reveal the effect of impression management tactics conveyed on social media on the market performance of musicians’ human brands.Design/methodology/approachSecondary data research classifies 5,940 social media posts from 11 music artists into self-presentation tactics (self-promotion, exemplification, supplication and ingratiation). It shows their predictions on three market performance metrics in an annual balanced panel study.FindingsImpression management tactics via posts on social media are mostly self-promotion, improving the musicians’ market performance by increasing the number of contracted concerts. Conversely, ingratiation generated the most positive effect on the musician’s popularity but reduced music sales. Besides lowering the musicians’ popularity, exemplification also reduced the number of contracted concerts, while the supplication had no significant effect.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, the research is the first to use social media postings of musicians’ official human brand profiles based on self-presentation typologies as a complete impression management tool. Furthermore, it is the first to test the effects of these posts on market performance metrics (i.e. outside of social media) in a longitudinal study.

Music Score Publishing Companies in the Second Half of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries: The Price Lists of the “P. Jurgenson” Music Sales Company (From the Collection of the Russian State Library)

This article is a continuation of research related to the activities of Russian music score publishing companies from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the field of the production and sale of musical instruments. This particular segment of industry demonstrates a number of features which are most clearly reflected in the price lists of the leading manufacturers, as well as a number of official commercial representatives. The advertising mechanisms and technologies are connected with the design of print copies, thematic publications, as well as structural and organisational features. Each of these embodies a marketing policy by way of commercial tool designed to demonstrate the best and highest quality aspects of a given enterprise designed significantly to increase cash turnover of the profiled range of goods. One of the most significant market players was “P. Jurgenson,” a company which operated in conditions of fierce rivalry while searching for its own individual business image. The facets of this image consisted of an objective complex of features formed by the development of capitalist relations and personal qualities, as well as the totality of cultural notions and possibilities. In each case, this was a demonstration of both general and specific aspects, the latter of which reveal the inimitable features of entrepreneurship, its system and potential. The opportunity to comprehend and assess the scale arose thanks to materials in the collection of the Russian State Library, which now for the first time have been introduced into academic studies.

Nocoastjazz

Nocoastjazz

Vinyl as Fine Wine: The Role of Expectation on the Perception of Music Format.

While vinyl, compact discs, and even eight-track tapes were traditionally promoted to consumers as producing superior sound, the introduction of compressed digital music, such as mp3s, was markedly different. Initially, one of the primary selling features of digital music was convenience and portability rather than sound quality. Recently, vinyl music sales have experienced a substantial resurgence. Waveforms from vinyl represent recorded music more accurately than compressed digital formats and have the potential to produce better sound. Even so, most music listeners do not reliably listen to music on audiophile quality high-end equipment. For this reason, we believe one aspect of vinyl sales is the expectation that vinyl quality is superior. In this study, we sought to isolate the contribution of expectation to perceived sound quality. Participants were asked to listen to a selection of music on either vinyl or mp3. Some participants were told that they were listening to vinyl when the musical selection was an mp3, while others were told they were listening to an mp3 while actually listening to vinyl. A multivariate analysis through a Canonical Correlation Analysis established that expectation of music format quality drove post-listening evaluations.

“We Don’t Have Those American Problems”: Anti-Black Practices in Canada’s Rap Music Marketplace, 1985–2020

Beginning in the early to mid 1980s, Hip Hop culture appeared on Canadian stages and in homes, even as it was limited in supply on commercial radio and television. Unlike their American counterparts, mainstream Canadian emcees (many of whom were racialized as Black and identified with the city of Toronto) were notably dependent upon personal finances, under-resourced independent record labels, distribution deals, and state and not-for-profit grant monies to subsidize the conceptualization, production, and promotion of their art. Labelled “urban music” in an attempt to spatialize and covertly reference Blackness, Hip Hop in Canada, from the outset, was mapped against, in conflict with, and outside of the national imaginary. While building local scenes, an independent label system, and a cross-Canada college radio, television, and live music infrastructure and audience, Hip Hop artists developed spaces of resistance, circumvented industry-generated obstacles, and defined success on their own terms — all of which suggested that they were not solely at the will of the dominant white music industry. And yet artists simultaneously encountered anti-Black practices that constrained the creation and sustenance of a nationwide Hip Hop infrastructure and denoted an inequitable structuring of support for the arts in Canada. By examining the interface of Blackness, art, and the racial economy of Canada’s creative industries, this article will outline instances of Canada’s anti-Black racism as well as the challenges Hip Hop artists and industry professionals have faced in the areas of recording and label relations, music sales, broadcasting regulations, and the accolade system. These social relations — many of which are rooted in longer histories of race relations and anti-Blackness in Canada — resulted in industry-wide policies, practices, norms, and ideologies that unfairly disadvantaged Black artists and undermined the realization and marketplace potential of a Hip Hop infrastructure within and beyond Canada.

Marketing

Marketing

Video Killed the Radio Star? Online Music Videos and Recorded Music Sales

We study how online video platforms affect the sales volume and sales distribution of recorded music. To do so, we study two events that removed and then partially restored access to online music videos for consumers in Germany. Because of a legal dispute, virtually all music videos were blocked from YouTube, which led to a decrease in record sales of about 5%–10%. When the dedicated platform Vevo entered a few years later, record sales increased again by a similar amount. This is effect can be attributed to user-generated content (fan videos and cover versions) as much as to official music videos. Record sales of newcomer artists and mainstream music benefit disproportionally. We discuss the implications for debates on the reform of compulsory licensing rules and copyright.

1970s: How CKLW Radio Dominated American Music – From Canada

ABSTRACT The radio and music industries have a symbiotic relationship: record label teams convince station managers to play certain songs that attract an audience to sell to advertisers while increasing music sales. This article shows how one Canadian station used geography and a disruptive format to have an outsized influence on the American music business in the 1970s. CKLW also provided a conduit to the U.S. market for Canadian musicians it was required to play. But an effort to continue that success as an FM station was stymied by Canadian regulators.

Can digital consumption boost physical consumption? The effect of online music streaming on record sales

Despite a consensus that sales of physical albums have declined with the increasing prevalence of digital music, this seemingly unequivocal observation may not be true. Physical formats still occupy a fraction of the market, with a noticeable increase in the sales of physical albums in a few countries where digital media is predominant. This study empirically examines the impact of two online music channels (streaming and downloading) on physical album sales in the South Korean music market. By utilizing a unique dataset representing nationwide music sales, our empirical findings suggest that the growth in digital music services can be positively associated with an increase in physical album sales. In particular, this finding is more salient for male, solo, and lesser-known artistes. This empirical evidence implies that burgeoning music streaming services (access-based digital consumption) may lead to another ownership-based physical consumption. Our findings provide useful managerial implications for practitioners in countries where streaming services are growing.

The Impact of Perceived Ease of Use towards Perceived Enjoyment and Customer Experience to Customer Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention (Case Study Among Spotify Premium Users)

The purpose of this research is to analyze the impact of Perceived Ease of Use towards Perceived Enjoyment and Customer Experience to Customer Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention. The digital world offers many business opportunities to companies that run platforms turning web-users into subscribers. The high trend of digital music distribution affects music sales in the physical form, seen from the income which decreases from year to year. From this point we can see that it is undeniable Customer Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention plays an important factor in music streaming service. In this research, the data analysis method used is Structural Equation Model Partial Least Square (SEMPLS) method. To conduct analysis using PLS method, this research is using smartPLS 3.0 software.The hypothesis of the research are H1:Perceived Ease of Use has a positive effect to Perceived Enjoyment, H2: Perceived Ease of Use has a positive effect to Experience, H3: Perceived Enjoyment has a positive effect to Customer Experience, H4: Perceived Enjoyment has a positive effect to Customer Satisfaction, H5: Customer Experience has a positive effect to Customer Satisfaction, H6: Customer Satisfaction has a positive effect to Repurchase Intention. H7: Perceived Enjoyment mediates the relationship between Perceived Ease of Use and Customer Satisfaction. H8: Customer Experience mediates the relationship between Perceived Ease of Use and Customer Satisfaction. H9: Customer Satisfaction mediates the relationship between Perceived Enjoyment and Repurchase Intention. H10: Customer Satisfaction mediates the relationship between Customer Experience and Repurchase Intention. The result of this research shows that H1, H3, H4, H5, H6, H7, H9 and H10 are accepted but H2 and H8 are rejected.Keyword: Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Enjoyment, Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, Repurchase Intention

From print to digital: First steps in collecting digital music publications in UK legal deposit libraries

As a result of the 2013 Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations, the United Kingdom’s legal deposit libraries acquired two large collections of digital music publications in PDF format: 43,165 from Music Sales and 13,167 from Faber Music. These constitute their back catalogues for the period 2013 to 2018. This article considers the genres of music that were collected, the relationship between printed and digital output and intended users. The increasing prevalence of digital publication in the United Kingdom’s music publishing industry was evident, with 99% of the content collected from these firms in this period in digital format. The ‘near duplication’ of content through the production of variant editions contributed greatly to the volume of output. Although 71% of content was popular music, other musical genres were also represented. Most of the publications were intended for performance rather than academic study. Despite the tendency to reprint extracts from printed publications digitally, there is currently little potential to switch UK music publishers from print to digital deposit. To truly reflect the nation’s cultural heritage, future collecting will need to embrace the breadth of the United Kingdom’s digital music publishing industry. Legal deposit libraries will need to collect publications with accompanying audiovisual content, those in multiple parts, proprietary music notation file formats and interactive content delivered via apps. This will require workflows that can accommodate publishers producing a handful of publications and those publishing at scale. The sustainability of collecting relies on close cooperation between libraries, composers, publishers, distributors, aggregators and music notation software providers.

Chasing Dreams, Finding Nightmares: Exploring the Creative Limits of the Music Career

Chasing Dreams, Finding Nightmares: Exploring the Creative Limits of the Music Career

ET: Statistical study to investigate the descending trend of Live Music Industry in Pakistan

Due to the growing demand for concerts after a decline in recorded music sales, the globally live music industry has become an important income source for music artists and countries’ economies. In Pakistan, neither music artists nor the economy could take advantage of this opportunity due to certain factors. The present study was designed to investigate the influences of factors such as extremism and terrorism (ET) and security issues (SIs) on the live music industry in Pakistan. Data was collected through an online questionnaire from 203 music artists and was statistically analyzed through a regression test using SPSS techniques. The findings of our study depicted that these factors had a negative influence on the live music industry. Besides, the frequency of live music events decreased with the increase in the magnitude of these factors.

Data warehouse for analysing music sales on a digital media store

Nowadays, every company knows that when making a decision that has a potential in affecting their assets, an accurately processed report is necessary in order to support the reasoning behind their decision. Generating a report for stakeholders quickly and accurately is highly required in assisting them making a data-driven decision. By developing a data warehouse, it is possible for a company to do a data-driven decision making to appeal to their customer segments. This paper proposes a data warehouse model design to analyse the sales data contained in the database. The method that was implemented for this particular data warehouse development is the nine-step methodology designed by Kimball. The results are then presented in pdf form and an interactive dashboard.

Superstars vs the long tail: How does music piracy affect digital song sales for different segments of the industry?

This paper estimates the causal effect of illegal downloading on recorded music sales volumes. We explicitly allow for differing effects of piracy on superstars versus other songs (i.e. songs or artists that are respectively ranked at the top or lower in the sales distribution), with an extension about product variety. We use a difference-in-difference approach, exploiting the natural experiment of the introduction of the HADOPI anti-piracy law in France in 2009, using Belgium and the Netherlands as a control group. We find a positive effect on music sales after the introduction of the law, thus implying a negative effect of music piracy. The effect is greater for top selling songs compared to lower ranked songs. It is stronger shortly after the introduction of the law and diminishes in later periods for all songs except the top sellers or superstars. After the introduction of the law, consumption became more concentrated in terms of musical genre and style, indicating that piracy increases consumed product variety.

Downstream Copyright Infringers

The advent of on-line music sales has been a boon to the recording industry as well as for musicians and the general public. Previously unknown artists have found new avenues to showcase their work, and consumers have easy access to an enormous variety of musical genres.Yet an unintended consequence of the ability to sell songs through internet downloads is a novel, and until now, unnoticed way to infringe on copyrights - which, unless remedied, could lead to new classes of defendants never contemplated or desired to be ensnared in the Copyright Act’s protections for artists, musicians and authors. Unlike a brick-and-mortar transaction, the act of purchasing a song on the web requires that the purchaser “download” a digital file of the song - that is, make a copy of the song that is located on the vendor’s website, and transfer that copy to the consumer’s computer. In this on-line transaction, consumers are availing themselves of one of the rights of the copyright owner, namely the reproduction right. Of course, by making songs available for purchase via download, the copyright owner is authorizing such a reproduction. But if the downloaded song is in fact infringing on another’s musical composition copyright rights, this new method of purchasing music turns ordinary consumers into unintentional infringers. When a consumer downloads a song from a legitimate music store such as iTunes, she tacitly assumes that the song is not infringing on the musical work of another. If, however, the song is infringing on the copyright of another musical composition, then the consumer has made an unauthorized copy and infringes on the infringed-upon musician's reproduction right. It is only a matter of time before members of the recording industry grab onto this form of infringement and demand compensation from unsuspecting consumers. Copyright infringement is a tort of strict liability and courts would thus be constrained in their ability to give relief to consumers who infringe in this manner. This article argues that rather than wait for litigation to commence, Congress should consider legislating an exception for consumer downstream infringement that was neither contemplated nor desired when the Copyright Act was passed.

The effect of streaming services on the concentration of digital music consumption

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to articulate whether consumers’ use of music via streaming service benefits niche products and diversified consumption of music. It examines does winner take all or is long tail achieved in the digital music market. Design/methodology/approach To investigate the degree of concentration in the digital music sales, this study measures multiple concentration metrics using the top 100 songs for 245 weeks listed on the Korean music ranking chart. Findings Conflicting results are found between the analyses based on short-run and long-run data. When sales distributions are compared weekly or monthly, the results show that streaming services have a less concentrated sales distribution than download services. However, the result becomes the opposite in the long-run analysis (i.e. one year). Originality/value This study proposes that the non-technological drivers such as the beneficial addiction of music consumption can be a crucial driver affecting the usage concentration in music industry, coupled with the royalty policy of access-based services.

The Value Gap in Music Markets in Canada and the Role of Copyright Law

The Value Gap in Music Markets in Canada and the Role of Copyright Law

The Effects of User Engagements for User and Company Generated Videos on Music Sales: Empirical Evidence From YouTube.

With the growth of social network services, users have been able to freely create and share music in ways that were once thought unimaginable. Sharing a music video through such platforms can now be done simply by anyone with access to a computer or smart phone. Online music content can be divided into two major categories—user-generated content (UGC) and company-generated content (CGC). While previous studies on the content of online music videos have examined the impact of this content on, for example, a company's marketing effectiveness and brand image, they have given little attention to the different effects of user engagement of UGC and user engagement of CGC. This study attempts to address this lack by examining how these two kinds of user engagement differently influence user music choices. We will also examine the differing levels of impact on users across the initial, middle, and final periods after a song is released. In order to examine the different impacts of user engagement, we apply an estimation of generalized least squares (GLS) with a panel dataset of 1,035 songs found on Gaon, the official South Korean music ranking chart. We use the number of music video shares generated by users and firms as proxy variables of user engagement in UGC and CGC, respectively. We find that user engagement of UGC and CGC positively influence music sales. We also find that the effects are not static, but rather change in the initial, middle, and final periods after a song is released. In particular, this study finds that the effect of user engagement of UGC on sales is greater than the effect of user engagement of CGC in the initial period but that the effect of the latter becomes similar to that of former at the end of this period. This finding suggests that managers of digital music providers should encourage consumers to create their own content in the initial period, as potential consumers are more likely to buy songs with more UGC content and shares in the initial period.

Television singing competitions create stars? Empirical evidence from the digital music chart in South Korea

After the success of American Idol, television singing competitions have become widespread and popular around the world. Although this format has had a substantial influence on the music market of many countries, few studies have quantified this influence. This study examines whether musicians from singing competitions (contestants) earned more money through digital music sales than did other musicians (non-contestants). We used a unique dataset that summed sales from the top 200 monthly digital music chart of South Korea between 2011 and 2014. We analyze the number of the song sold during this tenure, considering several variables such as gender and seasonality. Our findings indicate that songs by contestants yielded larger sales than did those of non-contestants. This positive impact is greater for the top two finalists in the competitions. The insights gained in this study will provide guidance to record companies who are considering recording contracts with contest winners.