Artist-Entrepreneurship

We are working on a paper about remix competitions. If you have ever participated in a remix competition, it would be great if you could participate in our little survey. Thanks a lot! Remix Competition Survey    ( done, we are analysing the results) Here a brief abstract what the paper is all about: Remix competitions have become very popular among aspiring music producers. If established artists like Depeche Mode, 50 Cent or Fatboy Slim call for remixes, up to 1000 and more music producers take the chance to submit their own interpretations of the original tune. Despite their popularity, remix contests are subject of controversial debates among artists. Organisers promote remix competitions as promising career opportunities for unknown artists to get a foot in the door of the professional music business. Participants, on the other hand, often accuse the organisers to exploit the artist’s dream and use remix contests only as a promotional tool. In this regard the prese...

Introduction At first glance, the reader may wonder what Theodore W. Adorno and Chris Anderson have in common and what that has to do with researching the music industry. On the one hand, a sophisticated German philosopher; a critical theorist of the 20th century; a member of the renowned Frankfurt School and a follower of Karl Marx’s thoughts on capitalism and society. On the other, Chris Anderson, a child of the digital economy, a blog writer, a journalist, a business entrepreneur and, according to The Time 100 , one of the most influential thinkers of the new millennium. Both were (respectively are) critically reflecting the media landscape of their time. In this paper I use the ideas of both thinkers and demonstrate the Mediamorphosis in the wake of technological innovations at the example of the music industry. On the one hand a centralized media system dominated by large media conglomerates, on the other side a democratic media system driven by prosumers. Thes two contrasting m...

Celebrated by the press as the democratization of art production, belittled by the established music industry as amateurism, hailed by artists as long awaited independence and neglected by the academic community; Artist-Entrepreneurship warrants a critical in-depth examination. The media celebrates individual examples where musicians become famous without ever signing a record deal. The bedroom is the recording studio, iTunes the record store and MySpace and Facebook the promotion tools – a record label, what for? And then of course, there was Radiohead … But after the initial enthusiasm, the music industry bashing and the 'everybody-is-an-artist-party', it is time to ask for a more objective picture. What about the other 99.9% of Non-Radioheads? Can Artist-Entrepreneurship provide a sustainable business model for new artists? Traditionally, record labels act as gatekeepers for the artists and audience by providing a minimum level of quality and supply regulation - b...

Mayerhofer, P., Peltz, P., & Resch, A. (2008). "Creative industries" in Wien: Dynamik, Arbeitsplätze, Akteure (Vol. 1). LIT Verlag Münster. Abstract (German) Die "Creative Industries" (CI) gelten als bedeutender Wachstumsbereich großstädtischer Wirtschaftsentwicklung. Im vorliegenden Band geht Andreas Resch der Frage nach, wie sich die Beschäftigung in den Wiener CI tatsächlich im letzten Jahrhundert entwickelt hat. Peter Mayerhofer und Peter Huber analysieren, inwiefern die CI in Wien seit den 1990er Jahren als "Beschäftigungsmotor" fungieren und welche Jobs sie bieten. Abschließend zeigt Philipp Peltz am Beispiel der österreichischen Musikwirtschaft Ansätze zu neuen Formen von "Artist-Entrepreneurship" auf, die sich im Zusammenhang mit aktuellen technologischen und wirtschaftlichen Umbrüchen herausbilden.