The Changing Location of Intellectual Property Rights in Music: A Study of Music Publishers, Collecting Societies and Media Conglomerates

Abstract

This article reports the results of a major study, conducted between 1996 and 1999, examining the impact of de-regulation and digital technologies on the global music industry. We analyse four negotiations in the process of bringing music to the world market: commodification, globalisation, delivery, and royalty management. We show that the location of intellectual property rights in this process depends on the mutual bargaining power of the parties involved, within a statutory frame vesting music copyright initially in the author. We describe the forces which have led to the appropriation of rights accounting for 80% of global publishing and recording revenues by only five companies: EMI (UK), Bertelsmann (Germany), Warner (US), Sony (Japan) and Universal (Canada). We predict that this regime will not last and consider the likely future location of intellectual property rights in music.globalization, information society, intellectual property, music copyright, royalty, vertical integration,

Legal origin and intellectual property rights: an empirical study in the prerecorded music sector

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The changing role of collecting societies in the internet

“…One important change was the emergence of music videos, but in terms of distribution technology they essentially represent just another form of broadcasting that didn't add anything new to the radio broadcasting model. Collecting societies have developed rather well working models for these distribution channels (Kretschmer, Klimis, and Wallis 1999).…”

Love Me Tender: new entry in popular music

“…First, we measured whether the new entrants had effective means to ward off competitive imitation as follows. Being able to exercise intellectual property rights in the music industry mainly revolves around the administration of copyright or derivatives thereof (Towse (Kretschmer et al, 1999;Towse, 1999Towse, , 2000. MELODY_COPYRIGHTand LYRICS-_COPYRIGHT were binary variables indicating whether entrants were pursuing remuneration of one of these respective copyrights under the umbrella of the new venture.…”