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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Negative responses to strategic innovation, a case study of record labels facing streaming

subject

description

Record labels are organizations in charge of phonographic production at the interface between musicians and the audience. Since the arrival of digital technologies such as the mp3 and the Internet, record labels have had to adapt to several changes: wider distribution channels, dematerialized competitors, customers’ demands for free music, more ephemeral cooperation. Specifically, streaming platforms like Spotify brought a major change known as a strategic innovation. A strategic innovation is a strong change that overturns all previously established values in the sector (renewal of values attached to the product, values attached to the customer relationship and power relations). However, facing this upheaval showed various reactions. If most incumbents adopted this strategic innovation while facilitating its implementation, some record labels responded to this change in a more ambiguous way. Specifically, some refused to distribute their bands on streaming platforms and digital aggregators. This decision is in great contrasts with the inner scheme of a strategic innovation. This research therefore aims to describe these behaviors and their associated justifications. We thus ask: How do some organizations justify their strategic responses going against a powerful change? By adopting a theoretical framework that brings together the concepts of strategic responses and justifications, this study adopts a dyadic view on this situation. The strategic responses’ approach makes it possible to observe sectoral changes and their influencing factors in a longitudinal approach, while the justification mechanisms derived from the Pragmatic Sociology of Critique make it possible to characterize the decisions of individuals at the heart of these organizations. This last theory is even more relevant as the non-streaming record labels we met were mostly managed by single individuals. The research field allowed us to collect a rich and varied material: qualitative semi-structured interviews with managers and members of non-streaming record labels as well as a quantitative library analysis of music fanzines. The transcripts of the interviews were analyzed through a content analysis with Alceste to identify situations and decisions common to all respondents. Then a manual analysis allowed us to refine the individual justifications for these recurring behaviors. The results confirm the existence of streaming refusal behaviors, i.e. negative responses to strategic innovation. Negative motivation for implementation seems to be the primary reason of this refusal. Some respondents have a negative capability on top of this negative motivation, indicating the impossibility of adopting this innovation. Regarding the justifications and their associated principles, they appear to be particularly varied. However, it is important to note that most of the respondents showed some indifference to banality.