Entertainment industries and globalization? Focus on the music industry

Résumé du document

For the past decades, globalization has represented the center of each and every interest from the populations, the firms, the states and the international organizations. It has invaded every aspect of our lives in a way or so, from the way we dress to the things we buy and the leisure we have. What we call globalization is the extraordinary acceleration of trade in the past decades, all over the world: trade of products, services, capitals, but also the circulation of people. In many ways, globalization has changed behaviors and ways of thinking. It started with firms, which entered first in the era of mass consumerism. And then populations followed, largely influenced by the way firms were encouraging them to do so. To be precise, I am talking about how firms drove consumers to buy more and more products and orientated their choices so that needs and desires were starting to look more and more alike. This process has largely spread to each and every aspect of the economy, making everything that could have a price an economical product, to which we could apply the rules of market. This is true for tobacco, perfume and sponges, as well as for music, and cultural "products" in general.

Extraits

[...] I think the majors considered they were lost as consumers and did not think it was necessary to try and get them back into the category of traditional consumers. At least they thought so until very recently. Then remains the traditional buyers of CD who fall into two other categories: the young generation sensible to marketing and traditional or specific music lovers. The first ones are those who are very sensible to marketing on TV (reality radio, press, supermarkets . There is a high risk they might become free-riders. [...]

[...] In my opinion, this element contributes to the killing of the industry. Such strategy may work on the pre-teens but sooner or later, it won't be enough. The globalisation of the music industry has encouraged people to flee ordinary actors of the music environment. In a way, I would say that globalisation has killed music itself, pushing people towards downloading and P2P platforms. If people tend to accommodate to globalisation in many aspects of their lives, conformism in culture is something people tend to reject more and more. [...]

[...] In France, a law was voted in 2006 to reinforce penalties for pirates of the web. Several cases of piracy on the net have been taken to court, more to set the example than to anything else. Recently in France, a woman was taken to court because of a 1600 music files found on her computer, which she had downloaded thanks to P2P. In my opinion, majors have demonstrated their inability to innovate by focusing on the fight against P2P. [...]

[...] Conclusion In conclusion, we must sum up the main ideas of the analysis. Our study was aimed at studying a specific market in the turmoil of globalisation, and particularly the effect of globalisation on the music industry. The main point I wanted to focus on was the compatibility of the model of a globalised company with the case of a specific industry which sells music. We started on one observation: music is at its top whereas the music industry is in crisis. Two separate aspects were developed in answer to this paradox. [...]

[...] To do so, we have to correct the negative effects of globalisation on the music industry. As far as I am concerned, I would identify two possible solutions which have to be carried out in parallel, because one is useless without the other one. The first action would be for the majors to rethink their strategies of develop to introduce more diversity. The second action would be to take part into the revolution of technology on the internet. Thanks to the net, people want more and more music (judging from the success of living music, that is to say concerts and tours). [...]