By Hans Hoegh-Guldberg, Economic Strategies Pty Ltd (Editor, MCA Knowledge Base)

Last updated: 11 April 2008

Basic structure

The knowledge base has five basic categories: Welcome, Statistics, Context, Creation, and Support. The two last categories comprise what we have defined as the music sector. Creation focuses on composition, live and recorded ('mediated') performance. All other music-related activities are defined as support, ranging from education and training to copyright, funding, venues, and research and information services. The five basic categories and further classification into three creative and six support classifications are shown in the top diagram.

The creative section is further sub-divided as shown in the second diagram.

Support activities (third diagram) includes music education and the numerous other providers of infrastructure and institutional backup which help ensure the creation of music through composition and live and mediated performance in all its forms.

The diagrams are reproduced in clearer form in the attached file in portable document format (pdf). It also includes a chart of the total music sector (page 4) and the music sector model discussed in 'The music sector defined' in the context section.

Other pages in the welcome section

The Acknowledgments page in the ‘welcome’ section shows that the venture could not become reality without assistance from many sources, including the Australia Council for the Arts, and of course all the contributions from MCA councillors and others alike.

The knowledge base aims to provide a dynamic, comprehensive picture of the Australian music sector, in words and numbers. Such a picture requires contributions from many sources which we are constantly canvassing (please go to Guidelines for contributors in the welcome section to see what we are looking for). We welcome offers to contribute.

Background

The ideas for the knowledge base grew from a 2005 report advocating an expanded economic, social and cultural view of the music sector, based on a greatly expanded statistical program. MCA’s quarterly magazine, Music Forum, contains a summary. The following observations provide the basic thinking behind the music sector model:

First, the creators and performers of live music (composers, songwriters, musicians and singers) are the focal point – not mere inputs into a music industry centred on recording (a view that is getting antiquated anyway in an increasingly digital world). Without music creators and performers there would be no music sector, very little recording, no dissemination of music through records and digital media, and a critical ingredient would be missing from television and radio programs, films, videos and DVDs.

A society without music is of course almost inconceivable but the extent to which the society provides support is of paramount importance. The health of any national music sector depends vitally on the cultural, economic and tangible infrastructure support for its creators and performers, and on the extent to which the environment encourages cultural activities.

Second, the music sector model incorporates the creation or use of existing recorded music in broadcasting, film and advertising, public spaces, digital delivery, computer games, and for telephone ring tones and other new areas. These activities, while creative in themselves in the ways they use the music, disseminate recorded music whether produced by the established recording industry or elsewhere. Conventional music industry models underestimate the economic importance of these activities.

Third, 'support' activities as defined here are part and parcel of the music sector, ranging from music education and relevant business training to the role of a broad range of managerial and marketing activities, music organisations, copyright collection agencies, government funding authorities, research facilities, suppliers of musical instruments and equipment, and service providers such as accountants and lawyers specialising in assisting the music sector.