Revisiting recording industry in the digital era

Abstract

Just over a decade ago, the recording industry created a discourse about online piracy, blaming it for its alleged crisis. In fact, technical changes concerned a new profile of the recorded music field. After seventy years of full control, the recording industry lost its central position in this field and started negotiating its rules with technology and media companies that operate the Internet. Opposite to what many had foreseen, neither the recording industry succumbed, nor was it the end of the control over access to music. The recorded music field has increasingly devised its own rules based on the strong valorisation of copyrights and on the exploitation of user’s immaterial work. Thus, the Internet is a space of temporal intensification and geographical extension of the profits of companies that economically exploit the phonogram and strive to increase control over user’s online practices.

Keywords: recording industry, technology, internet.