Curriculum The Music Business
The Music Business
How music makes money: the industry's revenue streams, from vinyl to streaming, India's cassette revolution, royalties, copyright societies, independent artists, catalogues as investments, reels and viral hits, patronage for classical music, AI and what musicians actually earn.
- How the Music Industry Makes Money The main revenue streams in music - recordings, publishing, live performance, licensing and merchandise - and who earns from each. 📄 Read-aloud
- From Vinyl to Streaming How music formats changed from records to cassettes, CDs, piracy, downloads and streaming, and how each shift reshaped industry revenues. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Cassette Revolution in India How cheap cassettes in the 1980s broke HMV's dominance, created T-Series, and spread devotional, regional and film music across India. 📄 Read-aloud
- Music Royalties Explained The main types of royalties - mechanical, performance and synchronisation - how streaming pays per play, and why payouts per stream are tiny. 📄 Read-aloud
- Copyright Societies: IPRS and PPL How collecting societies license music to thousands of users like restaurants and radio stations and distribute royalties, and the debates about how they operate in India. 📄 Read-aloud
- Independent Artists and Indie Music How streaming and social media let independent Indian artists reach large audiences without labels, and the trade-offs of going independent. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Music Business: Checkpoint 1 Quick checkpoint - five questions on music revenues, formats, cassettes, royalties and copyright societies. 5 questions
- Music Catalogues as Investments Why investors paid huge sums for song catalogues of artists like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, how catalogue values are calculated, and why old songs keep earning. 📄 Read-aloud
- Reels, Short Videos and Hit Songs How Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok turned short clips of songs into hits, how labels license music to platforms, and how songs are now written for virality. 📄 Read-aloud
- Patronage and Classical Music How Indian classical music was historically supported by royal courts and later by sabhas, radio and concerts, and the "cost disease" that makes live performance expensive. 📄 Read-aloud
- AI and Music Rights How AI tools can generate songs and clone voices, the lawsuits over training AI on copyrighted music, and what this means for musicians' incomes. 📄 Read-aloud
- What Musicians Actually Earn Why a few superstars earn most of the money while most musicians earn little, the long tail of music, and how session musicians and teachers make a living. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Future of the Music Business How streaming prices, fan platforms, AI and live events will shape the music industry, and a recap of the module. 📄 Read-aloud