GLOBALISATION AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

2. GLOBALISATION AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

Globalisation is taken to point to the rise of a global market place — the weakening or dissolution of distinct national markets regulated by the nation state; the unprecedented penetration of previously self-contained economies (whether ‘third world’ or ‘ex-com- munist’) by global companies; and, as precondition and consequence, the integration of these far-flung markets into a world financial and regulatory system. That is, a global market (Morley and Robins, 1995). Globalisation also involves the global integration of production factors and services.‘National’ industries ‘selling abroad’ are increasingly giving way to the organisation of production and distribution on a global scale, sourcing mate- rials, labour, services, etc. across borders with little or no attachment to particular places. Both global production and global markets rely on (though by no means exclusively) new information and communication technologies (ICT) which allow the complex manage- ment and regulation of these global systems.

The cultural aspects of globalisation include the rapid increase in the global flows of infor- mation and of signs and symbolic goods. It is frequently argued that this increased flow blurs the boundaries between ‘here’ and ‘there’; represents a displacement of place by space; acts as a further impetus to the ‘disembedding’ of lived experience; and acceler- ates further time-space distantiation, whereby the forces which act upon us have a com- plex causality (or simultaneity) located ‘elsewhere’ (Giddens, 1990). Many believe these processes erode distinct local identities, contributing to a homogenised global ‘airport’ culture. For others, the situation is more complex. Distinct cultures open up to ‘the other’ to produce hybrid cultures, ‘third spaces’, migrant cultures. On the one hand, this may be seen as the adoption of local (ethnic) cultures by a global market; on the other, it can be seen as a reassertion of the local — not in the face of but within these global cultural flows (Chambers, 1994; Featherstone, 1990). These debates are very much to the fore when it comes to the music industry.The music industry is increasingly globalised and concentrated, currently dominated by five multina- tional companies based in a few of the world’s capital cities — Tokyo, L.A., New York and London.These multinationals deal with multiple media, hardware and software, and they have integrated music production, marketing and distribution with that of other (increas- ingly globalised) cultural or media industries, with Seagram/Universal’s 1998 purchase of Polygram the most recent integration. Between them they account for over 90% of U.S. sales and between 70% and 80% of world-wide sales (Burnett, 1995, p. 18). Some, there- fore, see music as a global culture, pointing to a global basis for the production and con- sumption of popular music which, it is argued, bears little attention to nationality, let alone cities or localities.The domination of a few companies in all aspects of the market (soft- ware and hardware, film and video, etc.) has heightened the debate over the control of media and cultural industries and raised questions about the ‘defence’ of local indigenous cultures from such irresistible market forces. Others argue that developments in infor- mation and communication technologies are continually opening up new forms of musical production and distribution and increasingly linking small local producers with global production, marketing and distribution networks. How do local music scenes and local music industries figure in all this? This paper will ask two questions. Firstly, how have these been used, not by ‘the global music industry’ but by the local city attempting to respond to globalisation? Secondly, how does this connect with the way those involved in the production and distribution of music operate — how does it relate to local scenes, networks and cultures of production, distribution and con- sumption? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------