From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The record industry is the part of the music industry that earns profit by selling sound recordings of music. In the early years of the phonograph in the late 19th century, the music industry was dominated by the publishers of sheet music. With the start of the 20th century the importance of recorded sound grew in the business, and at about the end of the first World War, records supplanted sheet music as the largest player in the music business. The business has largely been dominated and controlled by the record industry, as the economics of mass-production of copies allow the manufacture of valuable music recordings for a tiny fraction of their sale price. There have been repeated allegations of price fixing by the record industry.

The Recording Artists' Coalition exists to represent the interests of recording artists in their fight against what they see as inequitable treatment by the record industry.

There is a fundamental tension between the two industries – they have been in an uneasy symbiotic / parasitic relationship since this time, which is threatened by the advent of new technologies. Critics of the record industry today have compared it to the buggy whip industry, fighting the disruptive technology of file sharing by all possible means. It is worth remembering though that the sheet music industry were resistant to original phonographic industries, who in turn were initially resistant to radio, television, home taping and so forth.

• Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA)
• British Phonographic Industry (BPI)
• Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA)
• International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)
• Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA)
• National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS)
• National Association of Record Merchandisers (NARM)
• Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
• Recording Industry Association Of New Zealand (RIANZ)

• Record label
• World music market
• Open Music Model

• Recording Artists' Coalition website
• New York Metro article by Michael Wolff analyzing the decline of the record industry
• Salon article on Courtney Love's criticism of record industry business practices
• Federal Trade Commission press release regarding price fixing
• Antitrust settlement in Nevada price-fixing case
• Songwriter Janis Ian's critique of the record industry's policies
• The Net is the Independent Artist's Radio - August 10, 2005 MP3 Newswire article
• -- Research on the music recording industry
• Advanced Peer-Based Technology Business Models. Ghosemajumder, Shuman. MIT Sloan School of Management, 2002.
• Music Downloads: Pirates- or Customers?. Silverthorne, Sean. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2004.
• Magazine article about the effects of the Internet on the music industry
• The British Library - finding information on the record industry
• Music Economics Research

• Where have all the good times gone? -- the rise and fall of the record industry, by Louis Barfe