Publications

December 2007
Background Note

The Music Recording Industry: Digital Rocks

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Nancy Bartlett

Digital and mobile technologies profoundly and forever changed the long-held value proposition for the recorded music industry--the 12-song physical CD selling at $15. By 2007, it was apparent that the music recording business had become a digital business, and... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Disruption; Music Entertainment; Distribution; Practice; Technology Adoption; Value; Music Industry

30 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Tracks of My Tears: Reconstructing Digital Music

At the dawn of the digital music era, record labels went along with a pricing scheme devised by Apple that they are still paying for today. The idea to "unbundle" albums into separate tracks sold for 99 cents each suddenly... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

October 2019
Case

Street Symphony: Making Human Connections Through Music

By: Rohit Deshpandé

To Vijay Gupta, music was sacred. A highly accomplished and renowned violinist with The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gupta believed the act of making and performing music was a deeply spiritual practice — one that had the power to heal audiences and musicians... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Cultural Entrepreneurship; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues; Business and Community Relations; Music Entertainment; Human Needs; Music Industry; Los Angeles; California; United States

Awards

Friends of Music at Yale Prize

By: Julian De Freitas

Winner of the 2013 Friends of Music at Yale Prize. View Details

August 2006 (Revised March 2008)
Case

iPod vs. Cell Phone: A Mobile Music Revolution?

By: David B. Yoffie, Travis D. Merrill and Michael Slind

In 2006, a nascent market for music-enabled mobile phones was emerging to challenge Apple Computer's dominant position in the digital music industry. Through its iPod line of portable digital music devices and its iTunes Music Store, Apple controlled more than half of... View Details

Keywords: Music Entertainment; Emerging Markets; Brands and Branding; Sales; Opportunities; Price; Business Model; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Digital Platforms; Service Delivery; Music Industry; Music Industry

16 Mar 2015
News

Preserving a Musical Tradition

music and teach a new generation of young musicians the traditional rhythms. “I had a dream of a musical community,” he says, describing his initial concept. “A place where people went and were fully... View Details

Ominous Background Music is Bad for Sharks

Experimental research reveals the influential power of music to determine how people feel about the most vilified predator in the ocean. Elizabeth Keenan and Andrew P. Nosal discuss the study “The Effect of Background Music in Shark Documentaries on Viewers’... View Details

12 Dec 2016
News

How Streaming Is Changing Music (Again)

03 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Ominous Background Music Is Bad for Sharks

Unlike Hollywood films, documentaries tend to portray sharks in their natural habitats, as in Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week,” an annual weeklong programming block of shark videos. But new research indicates that documentaries may also fuel fear, thanks to the ominous... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Media & Broadcasting

10 Feb 2016
Blog Post

Combining an Interest in Music and Business

The first thing most people think of when they hear “Harvard Business School” is most certainly not “arts” or “music”. I mean, that’s what music school is for, right? To be honest, when I decided to apply to business school, continuing to... View Details

February 2008 (Revised April 2010)
Case

The Globalization of East Asian Pop Music

By: Jordan Siegel and Yi Kwan Chu

This case on the globalization of East Asian pop music is useful for teaching concepts of regional business strategy and also of cultural arbitrage. Music companies in the case must examine why certain markets are clearly more profitable than others. They must also... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Globalization; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Business Strategy; Expansion; Music Industry; East Asia

April 2001
Case

Music Industry Update: April, 2001

By: Jan W. Rivkin

Updates BMG Entertainment. View Details

Keywords: Music Entertainment; Music Industry

16 May 2015
Blog Post

Using an MBA to Reimagine the Music Industry

through the case method? Our HBS Takeaways series is an effort to help prospective students understand life at HBS through the experiences of students who are about to graduate. Kiran Gandhi studied mathematics at Georgetown before pursuing a career in the View Details

2002
Technical Note

The Recorded Music Industry

By: Marco Bertini, Victoria Carrión and Jose Luis Nueno

February 2018 (Revised June 2018)
Case

The Music Academy, Madras

By: V.G. Narayanan

Keywords: India; Southeast Asia