Example Of Qualitative Research Paper

Research Question:

"Will the new musical streaming platforms represent a major remodeling of the musical market?"

1. Introduction of the Research

1.1. General overview of the Musical Markets and the role of digital technologies for the recording industry

Since the beginning of the Information Age and the emergence of the Internet, traditional revenue models of the music industry are being undermined. According to Wikström (2012) the traditional ownership based models that were viable until the end of the 90s have declined in the past decade and the music industry was unable to find a sustainable model even though today “online distribution of recorded music (...) is growing rapidly in importance" (Wikström, 2012). Consequently

However with the arrival of Internet the control over the distribution path became irrelevant, as cultural goods such as music where made available everywhere on the planet and everything a consumer could possibly imagine was basically a few clicks away (Wikström, 2014). According to Wikström (2014) there are three different industries within the music industry that are subject to similar dynamics but are still based on different networks, structures and

With the arrival of Internet and ICTs the music publishing and licensing industry has flourished as publishers found thousandths of new customers willing to use their out-dated back-catalogues in their ads, movies, video games and TV shows (Randall, 2009; Wikström, 2014). Today most of the majors have developed publishing divisions that account for one third of their revenues (Randall, 2009). In the past 15 years the revenues generated from music licensing have doubled, thanks to more efficient licensing processes, which have allowed the publishing industry to become the first and most profitable industry (Wikström, 2014). Randall (2009) also claims that music publishing has induced some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions of the industry, for instance Universal Music Group's acquisition of BMG's back catalogue for $2.1 billion. Moreover, the publishing industry is the industry that benefitted the most from the success of streaming and subscription services as in order to reproduce their music these services have to pay licensing fees to music publishers (Randall,