The Transformations of Musical Intermediation
The Development of the Online Music Market in France
By Jean-Samuel BeuscartEnglish
THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF MUSIC INTERMEDIATION Construction of the commercial on-line music offer in France
Construction of the music offer on the Internet is above all a renegotiation of the legal and commercial rules structuring the market. Distribution is organized around a model of intermediation similar to that of records, three aspects of which are particularly controversial: the scope of the catalogues proposed to consumers, the format of the files sold, and the price of a music file. Conflict between the various actors on these three points resulted in the ousting of first-generation start-ups, followed by a compromise between actors in the information technology and record industries, at the expense of traditional distributors. The parallel world of mass home production is still in an embryonic stage.