Music & the Entertainment Economy

Within the past several weeks, two great events about the documentation of Canadian music scenes have been held in Toronto. Two weeks ago, dozens of aging punks gathered at the Gladstone Hotel for the latest installment of This is Not a Reading Series. The book of interest was Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History [...]

Some months ago, Nielsen released a study in which they asked music ‘industry experts’ their opinions on what the most influential media outlets are. To arrive at their findings, they regressed the ‘influence’ score given by industry experts for various TV shows and websites against the average audience size for the given media outlet, and [...]

Wired Magazine had a very interesting article about more bad news for the record companies.  A copyright ticking time bomb is set to explode on them in 2013. Basically, the 1975 Copyright Act states that all copyrights granted after 1978 revert back to their original owners after 35 years, with some marginal cases excepted.  This [...]

One of our preoccupations here concerns the relations between music and the ambiance of a place.  Also, the constellations of people, businesses, networks, and practices that make a scene.  You couldn’t find a better window into those topics than a recent documentary about Toronto’s worlds of music, City Sonic. City Sonic is an online collection [...]

Sonic Unyon label HQ in Hamilton, Ontario This Friday, December 4 the Martin Prosperity Institute’s Kevin Stolarick will participate in a panel discussion on “Acting Locally” at the Hamilton Music Awards Careers in Music conference at Mohawk College. Admission is free for secondary and post-secondary students. The details: This year’s HMA “Careers in Music” Conference [...]

Once again the Economist has a thoughtful perspective on the challenges facing the music business. This piece points to the rise of distributors who provide music for free (but legally) by monetizing the audio streams in a variety of creative ways: The past year has seen rapid growth of digital music services that accept the [...]