ABSTRACT
The recording industry has been a major focus of interest for cultural commentators throughout the twenty-first century. As the first major content industry to have its production and distribution patterns radically disturbed by the Internet, the recording industry's content, attitudes and practices have regularly been under the microscope. Underpinning most of this speculation and analysis, however, is not only a belief that the interests of ‘the recording industry’ are synonymous with the interests of the major record labels, but also that ‘the recording industry’, or even ‘the majors’, are entities with consistent goals and practices regardless of specific locality.
