What entertainment would you miss most on a deserted island? When people are asked this question, music is seen as most essential (80%), significantly more than the internet, books or mobile phones (research by BPI Statistical Handbook 2010). Young people even listen to music up to 6 hours a day; yet they only spend about $80 per annum on music, a figure that is declining year on year. Also check out the great infographic How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online. In summary: despite the huge value people attribute to music, the music sector is struggling to get paid for the value they offer. In the search for new business models that better capture this value, we do see a lot of (successful) experiments: pay-what-you-want concepts like Radiohead‘s, social capital exchange markets like Headliner.fm, music streaming/subscription services like Spotify, crowdfunding concepts like Sellaband and KissKissBankBank, Get one-Give one initiatives like Fairsharemusic.com, and many others.

We need your input! In light of this (r)evolution, we set ourselves an ambitious target of visualizing the whole sector business model, as a basis for future innovations. Explore this first/beta version of the Visual Map of the Music Ecosystem. The ecosystem is represented using the new Business Model Blocks. This is an (incomplete) version 1, open to all your suggestions and improvements for the next iteration! What have we missed? Which transactions or exact figures would make the visual map more complete? Download the pdf version or have a look at the full picture. Thanks for your suggestions; all contributors will be mentioned on the next version.