ABSTRACT
Introduction The recent crisis of the record industry has shifted into focus other ways to make money from music, indicating that the ‘music industry’ is larger than the production and sales of sound carriers with which it is often equated. As a matter of fact, it consists of three markets where, respectively, performances, records and licenses are traded. With this broader definition in place, the following account of the German popular music business begins around 1900, a period during which the three sectors of licensing, recording and live performance expanded rapidly and became increasingly interconnected. As it is primarily interested in developments and characteristics that distinguish the German case from the much better researched American and British experience, it ends with the 1980s as the time when the German music business became permeable to domestic rock and pop sounds from the margins, making it more accurate to speak of ‘the music industry in Germany’ rather than ‘the German music industry’ from then on.1 The chapter does not look at music production in the GDR, where popular music oscillated between state regulation and a shadow economy, lacking profit-oriented companies that are essential for a music industry (cf. Rauhut, 2002).
