Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry’s Value-Added Chain

Abstract

Based on the thesis that creativity is a collective process of action and that innovation emerges from it, this concluding chapter will analyze the phonographic industry’s most important processes of action that have been at its core since the Rock ‘n’ Roll revolution. My focus, here, will be the four central processes of the industry’s value-added chain: (1) the process of talent- scouting by A&R management; (2) the process of music production and of physically manufacturing phonograms; (3) the process of music marketing and promotion; and (4) the process of phonogram distribution. All four of these processes work together, but for the purposes of analysis, I shall consider them individually. They all have one thing in common, as my comparison of individual historic periods of the music industry in the 20th century will show: depending on how the individual processes are designed and run their course, they create more or less generous conditions for creativity to emerge.