Managing a media company in the “digital age”. The effects of Web 2.0 and social media on music industry

The music industry is in the midst of change. This change has been triggered by the influence of new media, such as the Internet or mobile telephones, which contribute to an increasing digitalisation of society during the last years. The results of the growing digitalisation are changes in the consumer behaviour, new devices and also new sales channels. Supply and demand of music products is greater today than ever before; however, the music industry generates only little capital because of illegal downloads and small revenues of the digital music market (Thurner, 2010, pp.5). In the course of the digitalisation, new media plays a big role. Like Peter R. Scott and Mike Jacka put it: “social media is the set of Web-based broadcast technologies that enable the democratization of content, giving people the ability to emerge from consumer of content to publishers” (Scott and Jacka, 2011, pp.5). Due to social media, people have the opportunity to communicate with people all over the world, to share pictures, videos, and audio files (Safko and Brake, 2009, pp.6). Interesting songs or videos are going to spread rapidly from YouTube within social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, unknown artists can become stars overnight (Urbanowizc, 2013). The digitalisation and social media have changed the framework of the music industry and because of that the management topics of the music companies changed as well.
This assignment identifies and discusses the management topics a company has to deal with in the music industry in the digital age. In chapter one the author explains the new framework of the web 2.0 and therefore the changing consumption habits of the consumer. Also the paper identifies the changes of the consumption of music by social media. In chapter two in the scope of this assignment, old and new communication models will be presented and analysed. Also the important management topics will be explained and further the effect on the music industry will be established.
For exemplification of both subjects the author makes use of the company Pandora Internet Radio.