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Media Development and Convergence in the Music Industry

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Media and Convergence Management

Abstract

This article aims to provide a greater understanding of convergence as process as well as moment of the inhomogeneous integration of differences within the development of media. The example here is the new role of “media prosumer”. It shows how the consequence is not a simple mix of the roles “consumer” and “producer”, but again something new in the history of the development of new media as a means of production for everybody. Today’s digital network media such as Facebook, YouTube, Spotify or SoundCloud allow consumers to share, to distribute, to publish, to criticise, to collaborate or even to produce music in a way that was previously only possible for corporations or organisations. This creates a challenge for convergence strategies within related processes of convergence which are explained in the final section of the chapter.

Carsten Winter is Full Professor for Media and Music Management at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research (IJK) at Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media (http://www.ijk.hmtm-hannover.de/). The author would like to thank Christopher Buschow, Dennis Collopy and Dr. Christian Handke for their comments on an earlier, quite similar version, of the article with a focus on social innovations related to prosumers in the International Journal of Music Business Research (Winter 2012).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Communication and Media Science historically distinguishes between four dominant groups of media with regard to the respective technology. The oldest group is the Primary or Role Media dealing with fundamental media roles (“minstrels”, “prophet”, “priest”, etc.) and institutions such as the “theatre”. Here, public communication takes place without the use of technology. Print or Secondary Media such as “books”, “newspapers” or “magazines” require technology for the production of public communication and culture; electronic or tertiary media such as “cinema”, “records”, “radio” or “television” require additional technology for their reproduction. The new digital networks or Quaternary Media require additional transmission technology and software. The medium is not the “Internet”, which is comparable to radio waves, but specific equipment, upon which services within a framework of communication-generalised expectations exist such as YouTube, Facebook, etc. They do not however differ through their being “social”. All media is social.

  2. 2.

    I have examined the various concepts used to differentiate these sub-processes of culture and communication and later value creations as well as the logic driving it in detail elsewhere in length (Winter 2006a, b, 2008).

  3. 3.

    The interviews took place within a research project conducted by the IJK of the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media for the Berlin Music Commission, in which a model of dynamics of the Berlin music economy was to be developed, in which concrete value creation potential and perspectives were to be identified and developed—compare Chap. 3.

  4. 4.

    The differentiation between “oral live music culture”, “performance music culture” and “recorded music culture” as phases of the current transformation of music culture follows Faulstich (2000).

  5. 5.

    The unfolding of this cultural difference follows the development of a technology into a media in relation to complex processes (Winter & Dürrenberg 2011), that are not easy to comprehend. It is a process of mediation between the developments of a cultural form of a medium within and between the processes of production, allocation, perception and use of, in this example, music. The process will become, as shown in historical reconstruction, more elaborate with the development of every new medium that makes these processes more independent.

  6. 6.

    The now common use of the terms “push culture” and “pull culture” or “on-demand culture” stem from James Lull (Lull 2002; 2007 discussed in Winter 2011a; Winter 2011a, b).

  7. 7.

    “The most basic change has been a shift in the role of the consumer—from isolated to connected, from unaware to informed, from passive to active.” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004:2).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Expo Plaza 12, 30539, Hannover, Germany

    Carsten Winter

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  1. Carsten Winter
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Correspondence to Carsten Winter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Kommunikationswirtschaft, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Universitätsstraße 65-67, Klagenfurt, 9020, Austria

    Sandra Diehl

  2. Institut für Kommunikationswirtschaft, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Universitätsstraße 65-67, Klagenfurt, 9020, Austria

    Matthias Karmasin

Appendices

Exercise Questions

  1. 1.

    Name the four groups of media usually differentiated in regard to the respective use of technology!

  2. 2.

    Name and explain the three stages in media companies’ competition for the future!

  3. 3.

    What practical challenge is strategic convergence foresight?

  4. 4.

    Name and explain basic economic assumptions and names of scientists related to the function of markets, the role of firms regarding innovation and of transaction costs and of the direction of value creation!

  5. 5.

    Name the four constitutive moments and context of media communication and explain how they relate to successful mediated communication!

  6. 6.

    Name the concepts which refer to the change of direction in the production of music culture related to the development and spread of digital network media!

  7. 7.

    Which group of proactive figures today have had the biggest impact on the transformation of the music culture?

  8. 8.

    What is changing music and media related roles as well as the consumption behaviour of their carriers?

  9. 9.

    What is a prerequisite to convergence strategic foresight?

  10. 10.

    What did those people with strategic convergence foresight have before others in the advent of print media?

  11. 11.

    How did electronic media such as radio, records and TV expand music culture with more opportunities of production, allocation, perception and use of music and how is the new music culture defined?

  12. 12.

    What was the motto of which counter culture evolving from cities like New York and London in the late 1970s when even punk music began to drown under the influence of commercial interests?

  13. 13.

    What, until today, receives too little time and attention in researching the potential of digital networked media?

  14. 14.

    What is the main technological characteristic of digital networked media and what does it allow?

  15. 15.

    Between which groups of consumers does Berman distinguish in the white paper “The open media company of the future” and where does he see the key challenge of the media company of the future?

  16. 16.

    What strategy changes Prahalad & Ramaswamy anticipate facing Napster first and on what new insight?

  17. 17.

    What seemed, until today, the best way to understand the new roles of consumers as well as the associated value creation potential and perspectives?

  18. 18.

    What are the two main problems with the “social technology”?

  19. 19.

    Why does the concept “consumer” avoid understanding the novelty of the relationship of customers to businesses based on digital network media?

  20. 20.

    When, why and how did it come to qualitatively new dynamics in the creation of value in the Berlin music industry?

Reflexive Questions

  1. 1.

    Is there any skill or freedom of yourself as a “prosumer” which is not yet but should be permanently institutionalized on a legal base?

  2. 2.

    What do you think of a future smarter, more inclusive and sustainable post-capitalistic music economy? Is it only a dream or do you think it will come true? Discuss five pro- and five counter-arguments!

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Winter, C. (2013). Media Development and Convergence in the Music Industry. In: Diehl, S., Karmasin, M. (eds) Media and Convergence Management. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36163-0_18

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