Topic summary
Music distribution
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Music industry.
Emerging business models
In the 2000s, consumer electronics and computer companies such as Apple Computer have become digital music retailers. New digital music distribution technologies and the trends towards using sampling of older songs in new songs or blending different songs to create "mashup" recordings have also forced both governments and the music industry to re-examine the definitions of intellectual property and the rights of all the parties involved. Also compounding the issue of defining copyright boundaries is the fact that the definition of "royalty" and "copyright" varies from country to country and region to region, which changes the terms of some of these business relationships.