The thesis asks whether there is a role for competition law and policy in the music
industries. It is argued that there is a need for updated competition policy in order to
safeguard both end consumer welfare and the competitive process in these markets,
characterised by fast-paced developments and business model innovation. Indeed,
the past two decades saw the music industries undergo seismic changes, as even the
term ‘music industries’ was not in use as such before the advent of the internet era
and the decline in sales of recordings in physical format. Soon it became obvious
that the traditional music industry’s end consumers had chosen to migrate to
alternative methods of consumption, complementing and substituting between
several products for music, such as the digital format, the live concert ticket, and the
overall ‘music experience’. End consumers chose to completely by-pass the product
on offer, meaning the recording of popular music in physical format, as provided
top-down by a few multinational record companies, which the thesis identifies as an
oligonomy. As alternative business models emerged in the music industries, the
members of the oligonomy became followers of end consumer demand, remaining
stuck in their notion that the end consumer remains the passive, mass market.
Addressing this era as an era of market failure helps to identify the role of the end
consumer within the business model of the music industry and to understand
emerging trends and patterns in the music industries. Indeed, technological and
copyright developments in the late nineteenth century enabled the hardware
industries to morph into the recorded music industry, operating under the same
business model of copyright exploitation. It follows that the market deriving from
this business model is a market prone to monopolisation, resulting in a
homogeneous product, designed and delivered top-down to the mass market. The
resulting product was not only foreclosed by the few members of the oligonomy, but
the operating business model made it impossible for the competition authorities to
justify concerns. When the technology allowed for it, the creeping market failure
came to the limelight and the end consumer started by-passing the oligonomy to
gain access to the foreclosed content, generating consumer demand-driven business
models. This translated into business model innovation. To illustrate, the thesis
investigates the trial-and-error relationship between the competition authorities of
the US, the EU, the UK and the old business model, addressing the failure to
appreciate the bottleneck around the creative output that was being created, and the
need to safeguard consumer welfare. To compare, the thesis also examines cases in
the new business model era, observing the stance of competition authorities towards
consumer demand generated business models. The thesis concludes with the
affirmation of the need to design welfare enhancing competition policy, which places
the end consumer in the forefront. To achieve this, the thesis proposes the
consultation of the relevant business model literature
