Negotiating platformisation: MusicTech, intellectual property rights and third wave platform reintermediation in the music industry

Abstract

The music industry is a frontier sector of platformisation. Having undergone two previous waves of platform reintermediation in the form of peer-to-peer networks and streaming platforms, a third wave of platform reintermediation is now underway, as a constellation of MusicTech start-ups, fuelled by angel investors and venture capitalists, experiment with digital technologies allowing users to consume or create music in novel ways. Drawing on interviews with key actors in London and Stockholm, we reveal that an accommodation between tech disruptors and industry incumbents was achieved during the second wave of platform intermediation. However, emerging links between incumbents and MusicTech start-ups in the third wave are overshadowed by a chronic tension that is constituent of intellectual property capitalism and amplified by the legacy effects of preceding waves of platform reintermediation. The ownership of intellectual property confers significant advantages to incumbents when challenged by platform incursion, with copyright assets robustly asserted through publishing rights and defended in law. Set in this context, our examination of the music industry as a pioneer platform industry entering a new wave of platform reintermediation reveals key challenges for both incumbents and start-ups in other sectors of the economy as they too enter broader processes of platformisation.