How Creative Are the Creative Industries?
Conference of the Association for Cultural Economics International,
12 September 2002, USA
The major music companies justify their uncompromising battle against copyright infringement (Napster et al.) by arguing that they defend the artists’ intellectual property and therefore their creative potential. In this sense, the music majors see themselves not merely as a part of the so-called ‘creative industries’ but as an integral element that stir up and produce creativity... This paper argues that the music industry’s current oligopolistic structures do indeed not foster creativity but, in contrast, restrain and even strangle the creative processes of artists.