From Plastic to People

This thesis investigates the practical experiences of Music company officials with multiple rights deals (or 360 degree deals) up and until June 2010 in the Netherlands. It seeks to answer the question: Under what conditions do Multiple Rights Contracts succeed or fail in satisfying both parties involved in the Netherlands up and until June 2010? And a number of sub-questions regarding changes in the industry, vertical integration, the structuring of deals between artists and music companies, and how the findings related to the existing literature on multiple rights deals. The strategy is qualitative, conducted through semi-structured interviews with seven respondents from music companies active in the Netherlands. The focus of the research is inductive and seven case studies were made, after which these studies were compared. This comparison is the major part of the thesis. The research indicates that the industry has changed from a segmented industry towards a more composite whole, where business no longer revolves around components of an artist’s career but the entire career. Furthermore companies are searching for new ways to earn money and in some cases are integration parts of the vertical chain of production into their structure. The opinions on vertical integration are manifold in the Dutch music industry and findings indicate that not all companies share the same sentiments regarding servicing areas other than those traditionally serviced by record companies, while at the same time sharing in revenues from those other areas. The key to successful multiple rights deals that was found in the research is: the quality of the relationship between the artists and the music company. This translates into a number of components of the relationship that are important, namely: trust, the quality and intensity of communication, long term commitments and the execution of one’s tasks. These components were found to be the most important and mostly connected. The findings also indicate that the existing literature only partially applies to the Dutch situation regarding multiple rights deals. This translates as follows: ongoing debates in the literature translated directly into practice, while other issues raised by the literature were of little consequence in the cases compared. The thesis starts with an introductory chapter on the subject, a methodological chapter a definitional chapter, a chapter with summarised cases and comparisons between the cases followed by a chapter pitting theory against practice, the thesis concludes with a summary of the findings and a discussion of the thesis itself.