The South African Music Industry

1.2. Conceptual Framework

The analysis presented in this report has focused on the music industry primarily as an industry. However because the music industry is a site of cultural production, is a global industry and is dispersed across a variety of traditional sectors the analytical tools that we have used in this study differ somewhat from sectoral studies that are based primarily in manufacturing. It is the object of this section to introduce those concepts.

Any commodity moves through a value chain from the point of production to its sale in the market place. The value chain is simply all those elements of the production system through which the product passes from its design to its sale. In analysing the South African music industry, this study has drawn on Charles Landry’s five column model. This model is a direct adaptation of traditional value chain models but includes concepts directly relevant to the cultural industries. In addition, the model emphasises the possibility for each part of the process to have an impact on the rest of the value chain and in so doing avoids creating a static, linear representation of the sector. The five columns are:

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  Beginnings;
  
• 
  Production;
  
• 
  Circulation;
  
• 
  Delivery Mechanisms; and
  
• 
  Audience Reception and Feedback.
  

Beginnings

Captured under the concept ‘Beginnings’ are a number of variables that are best described as those social, political and economic processes and structures that provide the context conducive to the emergence of a creative milieu necessary for sustaining a cultural industry. Whilst Landry and Bianchini write of the importance of ‘soft infrastructure’ and creativity in development, we should not lose sight of the ways in which these are intimately connected to societal processes, structures and business strategies⁶. It is in understanding these that we will be empowered to make the most meaningful and sustainable interventions in the cultural industries.

Production

Production refers to the process whereby a product or service is produced. Accordingly it would refer to both the creation of a master in a recording studio and to the mass production of cassettes in a manufacturing plant. Given the fragmented nature of the music industry, production occurs in a number of sites and forms.

Circulation

Circulation is defined as any variable that impacts on the distribution of music from the point of production to the delivery mechanism. As such it covers both the intangible aspects of the music industry, such as the legislative framework, and the more immediately corporeal aspects such as the trucks that deliver the physical product to retail outlets.

Delivery Mechanisms

A multiplicity of delivery mechanisms exist. Delivery mechanisms are those structures that make music available to the market, thereby laying the foundations for returns on investment. In this report we deal primarily with retail, broadcast and live music.

Audience Reception and Feedback

Audience reception and feedback refers to vehicles which allow for the reformulation of investment strategies on the basis of audience response. These vehicles provide the basis for carrying opinions and views that form the foundations of beginnings.

By way of illustration let us consider how one would use the five column model to understand the importance of a South African music stand at MIDEM. The presence of South African music at an international trade fair is an example of a delivery mechanism, as the trade fair ‘delivers’ South African music to the world. Simultaneously that trade fair has implications for the ‘beginning moment’ as it expands the market-base of SA music. The trade fair may further effect the ‘production moment’ as it would expose Artist and Repertoire (A&R) directors to different types of music that may sell in the market place. The trade fair may then be a moment of audience response and feedback where visitors to the show give their opinions on the sort of music being played by the South African contingent to the show.

The audience response and feedback may then also impact on the production and beginnings moments. The showcasing of South African music at a trade fair may finally have implications for other delivery mechanisms, such as broadcasters by exposing the compilers of playlists to SA music, thereby setting up another dynamic interaction.
What the above example captures is the importance of linkages to the cultural industries. What enables the industry to grow, is not so much excellence in a single aspect of the industry but rather highly effective and well-utilised links between its different elements and other industries, the effective communication of information within the industry and between the music industry and allied industries.
One of the objectives of this report is to examine those links and to propose ways in which they may be strengthened thereby improving the efficacy of the entire music industry. Thus in developing the analysis that lies at the heart of the Cultural Industries Growth Strategy, we will focus both on the elements of the music industry as outlined in Landry’s model and the efficacy of the entire music industry.

Globalisation

Globalisation, as used in this report, does not refer to the complete subordination of national industries to global giants, instead we refer to the subtle interplay between multinational and national corporations; international and national legislation; domestic and foreign markets. Globalisation, particularly in the music industry, is also a deeply cultural phenomenon.
One must not mistake this process of cultural globalisation with a process of cultural homogenization. Indeed the dynamics of global cultural product flows require that we understand local and regional cultures, for it is the cultural gap between those cultures and the culture exported by the world’s major music producers that shapes domestic and international consumption patterns.
Understanding globalisation as a dynamic social force allows us to formulate strategies that straddle the divide between the vision necessary to inspire innovative action and the challenges posed by the existing position of the South African music industry in domestic, regional and global markets.
In using these concepts of a dynamic cultural value chain, of linkages, and of globalisation, this report will generate an analysis of the music industry that focuses on the dynamic interaction between a variety of units of analysis - production and retail; national and regional; local and global - in order to provide the building blocks with which we can think about the future of the industry.