Facing the global music industry: Norwegian responses to the digitalisation of the music industry

This talk presents research from the project Music on demand: economy and copyright in a digitised cultural sector, University of Oslo. The talk discusses aspects of how digitalisation shape and develop the Norwegian music industry, in specific how digital media open up new global markets and increase the potential to reach international audiences with Norwegian music. At the same time, the digital music industry is characterised by new revenue flows, complex copyright issues, and new relationships between music stakeholders and online media.

This means that musicians and fans, as well as the cultural content and cultural industries are linked in new ways, through new media. For music industry professionals to exploit these new media opportunities, this means that interaction and negotiation with a greater range of parties under new conditions is required. Inspired by production studies (e.g. Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2011), this project adapts an agenda of studying how different music industry professionals act and interact within a digitalised music industry context.

Through a large quantitative survey conducted over the autumn and winter 2018, supplemented with interviews with managements, record labels, publishers and others, the project asks to which extent the digitalisation demands reconfigured activities and competences for those working with music, and how this involves innovation in the music industry. The study aims to give cross-disciplinary insights into Norway’s responses to the global challenges of the digitised cultural industries.

The stay in Stockholm and Södertörn University is planned to add comparative aspects to the project with potential to enrich and fortify the conclusions. Despite Norway’s status as an early adopter of digital music technology, Sweden’s position as a big global player and the host of well-established international publishing houses and the global streaming-giant Spotify, makes it interesting to compare central aspects of the two neighbouring, yet very different global music markets.

Anja Nylund Hagen is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Department of musicology at Oslo University.