The Music Economy: Entering a Post-industrial Era

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Within this essay i shall be examining to what degree the music economy has entered a post-industrial state. I shall do this by first highlighting the the definition of post-industrialism and show how this affected musicians in the present day; and as a result how this has affected my personal and professional development within the music industry. I will highlight interesting factors such as the different interpretations of how we define an era, what place the creative industries have within a post-industrial society and areas of my own professional development, goals and education.

The concept of post industrialism is a term coined by US sociologist Daniel Bell in his 1974 book 'The Coming Of Post-Industrial Society' in which he characterises it by the "Centrality of theoretical knowledge as the source of innovation and policy formation within the society" (Business Dictionary, 2014), this is highly western-centric in which the focus is a society that regards knowledge as power and technology as the instrument of those within it (Targ, 1976). This can only currently exist in the global west (Gibson, 1993), in which its exponent members are capable of realising industrialisation as a previous societal state as so to recognise the departure from it into a post-industrial state (Wikipedia, 2014). The features which define this departure can be identified as thus; Less and less people working for menial wage jobs, more people entering tertiary and quaternary education and work, the domination of the service sector, increasingly high levels of urbanisation, and as said before the prevailing dominance of technology and theoretical knowledge providing the basis for innovation.

As highlighted previously, the concept of post-ind...

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...nment or Entitlement: Rethinking tertiary music education. [online] Available at:

Whitman, B., 2004. A Singular Christmas. [online] Available at:

Wikipedia, 2014. Post-Industrial Society. [online] Available at:

Bell, D., 2008. The Coming Of Post-Industrial Society

Gibson, D., 1993. POST-INDUSTRIALISM: PROSPERITY OR DECLINE?

Block, F., Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse

Collins, K., The Future is Happening Already: Industrial Music, Dystopia and the Aesthetic of the Machine

Domanic, P., 2004. The emergence of a post-industrial music economy? Music and ICT synergies in Stockholm, Sweden.

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