ABSTRACT
As a significant, deeply integrated element of the cultural and entertainment industries, popular music in the twenty-first century is marked by discernible synergies, unexpected convergences and innovative uses of technology. one of the main forces behind these changes and resultant growth is the extraordinarily fast development of technological change in multimedia and telecommunications that has occurred globally in the past 15 years, particularly in the areas of digital technology and related new media. In turn, these changes have facilitated and encouraged new channels of dissemination and distribution. Industries and individuals have responded by creating and providing a greater variety of creative products to the market. In the (post)industrialized world, as real incomes have risen, consumers have demanded, and were encouraged to demand, more products along with new expressions of cultural consumption, which led to sustained
growth in this creative sector of the wider economy.3 By 2005 creative industries were contributing 3-6 per cent of the GDP.4 This was confirmed several years later in the UN 2008 report on creative industries:
Recent estimates collated by OECD for member countries indicate that the creative industries in France and the United States made up about 3 per cent of gross value added in 2002-2003 and almost 6 per cent of gross value added in the United Kingdom.5
