Editorial

This year the International Journal of Music Business Research (IJMBR) celebrates its 10th anniversary. The volumes of the past 10 years encompass articles covering a wide range of topics. The April 2022 issue reflects the journal's thematic diversity by combining an interesting mix of three very different articles.

The first article ‘The Impact of Article 17’ by the Danish scholar Frederik Juul Jensen investigates how the adoption of article 17 in the EU's new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market will affect innovation in the music industry of the EU member states. The author concludes that the new regulations will increase the rightsholders’ negotiation power with the tech platforms. Nevertheless Google & Co. will remain strong and influential market participants. If the rightsholders do not use their stronger position as a springboard for innovation, they risk again to fall behind the technological development with all the negative consequences involved.

In the second article, Boyang An of the Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine, USA analyses the recent history of the digital music market in China to a tight oligopoly dominated by two large conglomerates: Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) and NetEase Cloud Music. The market leader TME alone owns 90% of the music copyrights in China. The author highlights the role of China's copyright legislation in this process of market concentration and suggests deregulation measures to increase market competition again.

The third article – ‘Stream of Conscience? Live Music Streaming: Utility, Capital and Control’ – by Arthur Ehlinger and John Markey of the University of Glasgow, UK highlights the emerging market for live music streaming, which has been fostered by the still prevailing COVID-19 pandemic. By charting the history of live music streaming, the authors highlight the process of market concentration of a still infant music market, which is dominated by a few large broadcasters. Therefore, Ehlinger & Markey interviewed market insiders, revealing opaque business practices which further cement the market dominance of a handful of companies.

The April 2022 issue concludes with a book review by Carsten Winter on Guy Morrow's ‘Designing the Music Business. Design Culture, Music Video and Virtual Reality’, which was published as volume 4 in Springer's Music Business Research series.

The IJMBR is aimed at all academics around the world, from students to professors, from all disciplines and with an interest in music business research. Interdisciplinary papers will be especially welcome if they address economic and business-related topics in the field of music. We look forward to receiving as many interesting papers as possible. Please submit your articles at the journal's webpage: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ijmbr/default1.aspx.