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From an historical viewpoint the production, distribution, circulation and consumption of music went through numerous changes and displayed multiple interactions between artists, instruments and consumers. Music and the music experience are not only universally shared (Sève, 2013; Wolff, 2015) but relies on evolving patterns of consumption, on various forms of production and patronage, as well as on the on-going creation of instruments, around 12,000 (out of which 10,000 non-European) according to the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (Sadie, 1985).
Music, like books, has had a very sophisticated network of players and a broad division of labour for an array of different tasks (Becker, 1982). Music publishing, the first segment of the music industry to emerge as such, did not begin on a large scale before the mid-fifteenth century with the development of mechanical techniques for printing music. Prior to this, music has to be copied out by hand. As noted by Leurdjik et al. (2014, p. 133), “the music industry began as an industry of publishers who contracted composers and lyricists[…]”. Artists have been relying on various sources of revenues, contractual or not, supported or not by patrons (aristocrats, church[…]). For instance, at the end of the eighteenth century, Prince Esterhazy hired Joseph Haydn as his music director (Kapellmeister) for composing, running the orchestra, playing chamber music and the production of a series of operas (Abraham, 1979, p. 493).
Publishing music is still an important segment of the music industry together with recorded music and live performances, even if their respective parts vary historically and across regions (Figure 1). Music publishing pioneered the use of copyright to collect royalties, as, for instance in the USA, this segment of the industry was first granted copyright protection (for sheet music) in 1831; the Recorded Music segment had to wait until 1972, to be given any copyright protection (CITI: 17). A CITI (2018) report breaks down the revenues between business-to-business revenues (music publishing and licensing), music ads (radio, TV and video) and consumer outlays (physical and digital sales, concerts and subscriptions) stressing that some segments (concerts and subscriptions) are faring better than others (ads, physical sales). This multidimensional aspect of the music industry is often insufficiently taken into account, especially as the recorded music industry has...