Oberoende skivbolag i förändringstider
Om den förändrade affärslogiken i skivbolagsbranschen
During the last decade the conditions for the music industry have been changed significantly. With the dropping sales of physical phonograms and the increasing illegal file sharing, the record labels have been forced to adapt and thus seek alternative sources of income next to the traditional sales of phonograms. Our purpose was to investigate how smaller Swedish record labels adapt themselves to the changing environment within the music industry and which new alternative sources of income they can use to finance their music production. To do this we used a deductive approach where we started by researching theories we thought were relevant to the subject, which we then used to get valuable information out of our informants.From our empirical investigations it appears that the independent record labels are rather positive about the future and that they will be able to survive, even though they will have to change their ways of working to a large extent. Our results show that the record labels as we know then will disappear. Instead, the future will consist of music companies where the phonograms mainly will function in marketing purposes and the income will come from other sources like advertising, sponsorship and synchronisation et cetera. The record labels, as we know them, are indeed a fading phenomenon.