As today’s digital technologies modify the ways in which cultural goods are consumed and produced, the analysis of consumption patterns has become one of the most important activities for producers in the music industry. Information on consumer behaviour has become a strategic resource with which to anticipate competitors and improve the fit between supply and demand. If any media industry has become used to the brutal post-internet shake-up it is the music business, which is heavily focused on using and monetising new online platforms.
“Music downloading is by no means a unique phenomenon and consumers are approaching the digital environment in different ways,” says Warner Music international general counsel Chris Ancliff (pictured). “New platforms to deliver content are being developed at an amazing rate and this has had a crucial effect on the work that we do.”
