The Role Of Music In The Music Industry

In 2012, using Australian census data, the Australia Council estimated 100,000 musicians paid for their performances annually, while 200,000 were playing on an unpaid basis (Pearce, in Tschmuck, 2013, p. 8). It was however more difficult for the Australia Council to know how many musicians survive exclusively on their music. Indeed, it is hard and rare for a musician to make it through the music industry these days. In the general idea, musicians and music business entrepreneurs have nothing in common. The formers are known for their artistic honesty while the latters exploit art for financial gain (Kubacki, 2005, p. 225). So why are these two areas linked? Focusing on the popular music area, we will be wondering if the union of music and business

2-­‐3). In fact, the author establishes another relation between music and economy in the fact that while societies develop an economic well being, individuals have more space to focus on cultural and creative tasks. Economic prosperity enables individuals to “purchase music and the means to reproduce it”. Music business depends on its artists and their popularity. “They are the shining stars, and their creativity generate the industry’s main source of income” (Barrow & Newby, 1994, p. 2). But in the same time, without record companies, the artists would have nothing to sell. Indeed, the artist only is “the tip of the iceberg” that hides hundreds and thousands of people working to promote new acts and sustain the artists. That is why we can be sure that there is a strong relation between music and

Therefore, artists need the music industry to achieve their goals of success, meet their audience, and live from their music. This interdependence relation is really strong as “the production of art requires artists” (Kubacki, 2005, p. 230). According to Negus (as cited in Kubacki, 2005, p. 231), “music can be both artistically pure and commercial successful”. The music business is about making money from copyright compositions. As there will always be musicians to write these compositions, we can guess that the music business will never stop. It sure will have to adapt to upcoming changes, though. Despite all the technical, social