This article uses the concept of social network markets to analyze the problem of uncertainty in the music industry.
On the basis of empirical data, the article puts forward the argument that to understand the preferences of listeners, a music company must be embedded in social networks. This embeddedness has always been an asset, as is indicated by the successes of independent record companies. However, nowadays it has become easier due to the ever-widening spread of social networking sites. We demonstrate that a company that communicates with its consumers via a Facebook profile or a YouTube channel on a regular basis gains the opportunity to analyze this communication, which, along with other data obtained via the internet, can help in reaching music repertoire decisions. At the same time, these practices may lead to the infringement of recipients' privacy and the commodification of all actions undertaken by listeners online. It has been widely accepted that one of the distinguishing features of creative industries is their inability to foresee which products will become popular. Uncertainty is an inherent feature of every business activity, but in the case of cultural production, the problem is deeper. It is associated with the difficulties surrounding market research. On one hand, these difficulties arise out of the inadequacy of traditional research methods in the study of cultural products. On the other hand, these difficulties are inherent in the specific features of these products, that is, compared with other industries, in terms of product testing, a producer needs to invest a disproportionately large sum of money relative to the percentage of costs of the final release. 2 Richard Caves describes these phenomena as such: " he pro-ducer's intimate knowledge of the good's production process still leaves him in the dark about whether consumers will like it: nobody knows " 3 (emphasis in original).
0 kommentar(er)
