This thesis analyses the international music industry supply chain. The descriptive background presented entails publishing rights, the vertical integration of the historical music industry, the historical position of the artist, and follows the evolution of the digital technology, distributive production, and peer-to-peer file sharing networks in order to build a prescriptive model which addresses the following three research questions.

Given the revolution in technology in the music industry where do the Majors fit? What is the positioning of the artist in the new digital technology? And given the change of position of the Majors and the positioning of the artist what are the descriptive and prescriptive possibilities should the Majors disappear and be replaced by alternative elements in the music industry supply chain?

The present study considers the Music Industry as the trade of prerecorded music in any format and assumes  responsibility regarding the results presented up to July 2009. This thesis considers the four Majors as being part of the Music Industry rather than an absolute representation of the industry itself. Also this dissertation’s primary concern is the bundling and unbundling of the music industry’s supply chain and not the bundling of products within that supply chain. (Author abstract)Renard, S. (2010). Unbundling the supply chain for the international music industry. Retrieved from http://academicarchive.snhu.eduDoctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)International BusinessSchool of Busines