The new digital music marketing ecosystem: artist direct

New digital formats, media fragmentation and the evolution of
complex consumer behaviour continue to disrupt the music industries. There are substantial gaps in academic research in terms of
this newly emerging digital music marketing ecosystem. Even less
for independent artists who run Artist Direct (AD) to-consumer
business models and considered one of the fastest growing segments in the global recording industry. This paper constructs a
digital music marketing ecosystem for those actors establishing
market presence at the start of the industry value chain. Managing
small micro music businesses, these artists collectively represent
a significant economic segment and are an important supply chain
source for larger intermediaries such as record labels who monitor
the segment and sign artists from it. The findings consider the
actors, entities, systems, and processes operating in this new business ecosystem. A multimethod research design was used combining data sets from practice-led research; a concurrent systematic
literature review, as well as an ethnographic analysis involving
in-depth interviews (n=14) with music industry professionals. The
outcome was the construction of a digital music marketing ecosystem for this AD segment advancing marketing insights for the
music industries but also with implications for the creative and
cultural industries more broadly