ABSTRACT
The medical etymology of the word “crisis” refers to a turning point, at which the patient either gets better or worse, with the latter often leading to serious or even fatal outcomes. Translated into the economic sphere, crises can be longer lasting than is medically possible, so that the “economic body” can be in a state of crisis over extended periods, during which transformation and mutation may enable it to survive and recover. Since the late 1990s, the popular music industry has been an economic sector in a state of crisis because its principal means of revenue generation—the exploitation of intellectual property rights through the sale of recorded music—was undermined through the rise of file sharing enabled by new forms of computer-mediated coding and communications (Leyshon 2014).
