RADIO PLUGGING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE DSPlugging!

The music business gradually became the multiple rights business. Music became secondary and merely an ancillary (loss leading) arm for…

The music business gradually became the multiple rights business. Music became secondary and merely an ancillary (loss leading) arm for more lucrative brand-rights exploitation activities. In an era when technology liberalised and demystified the art of music making (as well as its distribution and consumption), music content exploded, and by the simple laws of economics lost more and more of its traditionally inherent value. Revenues from recorded music crashed by over 50% between their 1999 peak and 2014.

It now seems the pendulum is swinging back. With streaming continuing its march toward the summit of music consumption formats, coupled with the looming changes in the legal and regulatory landscape of the major markets, the music business is again becoming more about the music itself — or at least as much as all the ancillary (brand related) revenue streams that have since occupied a much more prominent role in the economics of the business over the last decade. Normalization of th…