Common access point to industrial, economic and developmental data from a variety of sources (UN, IMF, WHO, World Bank, etc.). Created by the United Nations Statistics Division.

Cherneff, Jill BR. " Dreams Are Made like This: Hortense Powdermaker and the Hollywood Film Industry." Journal of Anthropological Research. Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter 1991), pp.429-440. JSTOR. 9 Apr. 2008. <http://www.jstor.org/action/showArticle?doi=10.2307/3630352&Search=yes&term=dreams&term=hollywood&item=5&returnArticleService=showArticle&ttl=3533&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhollywood%2Bdreams;gw%3Djtx;prq%3Djeepers%2Bcreepers;Search%3DSearch;hp%3D25>.

           

            This article largely chronicles and responds to Hortense Powdermaker’s study of Hollywood culture in the late 1940s.  In the book, she wrote following her study, Powdermaker highlights the struggle between art and business and Hollywood and suggests the social underpinnings of Hollywood culture determine what types of films are made.  Powdermaker’s original contention is that the Hollywood film has had an impact on human behavior as dramatic as that of the wheel’s invention.  Powdermaker observed that the power of movies lies in it’s depiction of apparent reality—that what appears on the screen looks real and thus must accompany real values and ideas to be absorbed.  The remainder of the article focuses less on Powdermaker’s conclusions and research in order to focus on analyzing the research itself.  The author discusses the challenges facing Powdermaker in reporting on a population unlike those most anthropologists focus on.  Further, the author notices the absence of women in important roles behind the lens in Powdermaker’s research and contextualizes this historically as well as socially. 

            On a superficial level, it is interesting how Powdermaker’s journey in conducting her research mirrors that of Tod in the film The Day of the Locust.  Both leave a successful endeavor at Yale and go to Hollywood for a sociological investigation of sorts—Powdermaker an unbiased anthropological study and Tod an emotional snapshot of Hollywood’s locusts.  Some of Powdermaker’s research sheds light on the images of the industry contained in the film, such as the hierarchy of production and the social constructs behind the films. 

This article discusses the way in which the internet and digital distribution has changed consumption patterns. Strategic Marketing Departments of Record Companies are seeking information on consumer behavior in order to anticipate competitors and to "improve the supply and demand." This article contains an empirical analysis on the industry including on-line survey results that illustrate that music downloading is not the only way in which consumers are tapping into the digital environment.

UNIDO is the United Nations’ specialized industrial agency, mandated to promote industrial development and international industrial cooperation.

In this article featured in the Daily Pennsylvanian Marketing Professor Peter Fader blames downloading for the music industry's plummet. He argues that students will always steal music and that new music will always be leaked onto the internet, but that this is not responsible for the drop in sales.  In fact, it is the legal dowloading that is responsible for the decreasing album sales.

The collaborative fulfillment of consumer orders by Internet retailers and wholesalers has proven important in the realization of sustainable levels of online profitability. Concentrating on consumer direct fulfillment (or drop shipping), an empirical simulation model evaluates avenues for improving logistical performance. The empirical simulation model centers on the online music CD retailing industry. It evaluates the effects of emergency transshipments and demand dispersion on inventory and product-release performance, as well as on transportation costs, in consumer direct fulfillment operations. Results show that emergency transshipments improve inventory and product-release performances in these operations. Furthermore, the inventory-performance improvements are maximized when inventory facilities fulfill demand that is uniformly balanced across markets primarily assigned to each facility. Finally, gains in inventory and release performance obtained from emergency transshipments outweigh additional transportation costs incurred from a greater reliance on emergency transshipments for consumer direct fulfillment. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

This article alerts reader to the fact that it has already been three years in which the recording industry has put forth a great effort to persuade music lovers to pay for online songs yet still illegal downloading is widespread and the overwhelming public sentiment is one of apathy. The article says that "s consortium of 6 retailers, including Best Buy Co. and Tower Records, is investing in online service Echo Networks Inc." The music retailers are at their ultimate low and are now considering to become allies with the technology that continues to destroy them.  Many music retailers are announcing plans to get "into the online music business."

The article consider the effect of digital technology on the supply chain for music from the major record labels’ perspectives. Also the effects of piracy on the industry are discussed. The article concludes with a hope outlook for artists and audiences, but strongly asserts that the technological advancements have made it so the record companies will never fully recover or return to the era of opulence in which it reigned for so long.

 

This article discusses the way in which the internet and digital distribution has changed consumption patterns. Strategic Marketing Departments of Record Companies are seeking information on consumer behavior in order to anticipate competitors and to "improve the supply and demand." This article contains an empirical analysis on the industry including on-line survey results that illustrate that music downloading is not the only way in which consumers are tapping into the digital environment.

Music Week reveals that "the number of independent music shops and chains fell sharply in 2004." Ironically, within the same year there was a 63% increase in the number of supermarkets selling music. The closing of independent and chain music stores has encouraged non-music retailers, to experiment with the selling CD's in the UK and US. In the states Walmart accounts for about one-fifth of CD's sold across the nation.

This article discusses the ways in which record companies are compensating for their losses through marketing.  After the Sony/BMG merge, Columbia Record Executive Charlie Walk, leads the way.  He asserts his belief that for the majors to stay in on the game they need to legitimize the online music downloading space and create alliances with consumer-goods companies to make a profit where it is being lost. Thus downloading has changed artist marketing too.

Although the record companies have suffered great economic loss as a result of widespread downloading, they have been able to survive the drastic changes that the industry is undergoing right now.  However the same cannot be said of the traditional music retailer, the majority of which have had to declare banckruptcy or have had to close a number of branch locations.  The article estimates percentages of sales that will account for the future shift from physical to digital distribution in the next several years.

Mark Katz discusses how technology has served to preserve music while also serving as a "catalyst." Katz addresses how the innovation of the internet affected and continues to still affect the industry. He cites a series of case studies, that correlate the new ways of finding and listening to new music and the rising of new music genres to recording technology.

Written by two professors at the Penn in March of this past year addressing how the music industry's revenue has drastically dropped within the past three years. Many argue that this decline in profits is due to file sharing. They obtained data concerning album sales via purchase and downloading as well as consumer valuations from college students. They offer a new estimate of sales displacement caused by downloading.

This paper explores the online or digital distribution of music "as a technology practice" and suggests that this new phenomenon reinforces the "loose integration" of the entertainment industry. Also the paper gives a business background about recording industry conglomerates, ownership infrastructure and the gate-keepers for the global markets.

This article considers the impact of technology and downloading on the "supply chain" of music. It describes economics of the global music market and the super-power five major record that dominate the entire sound recording industry. It has a positive take on the future for artists and consumers alike, despite the present turmoil.

This work seeks to predict the impact of government regulation, in terms of new policy and programs, upon the music field for the future. It raises some ethical questions concerning the direction of technology and tries to account for how technological advancements will influence the national and global economy. The central issue around which the whole work is concerned is the commerce of music.

This book depicts authorship and copyright as a sociologist would, delving in to the mass culture debate. He grapples with the present phenomenon of bootlegging in mainstream music. This book is known for being the first "academic treatment" of the matter and Lee sets out to correlate Romanticism and capitalism in the act.

In this book the Music Research Institute at Berklee College of Music presents a manifesto for the the still unfolding music revolution. While record companies suffer tremendous losses, music is still being made and artists are as prolific as ever. However what has changed is th methods by which the music is being distributed to the masses.  This book discusses the non-traditional methods of CD distribution that are dominating at the present time. 

This article critiques the "crisis of reproduction" that confronted the music industry starting in the late 1990's. It explores some of the ways in which the industry is going about re-working its structure to compensate for its losses.  Also discusses the roles of the big four- AOL-Time Warner, Sony/BMG, Universal and EMI in the reorganization.