The coevolution of IT innovation and copyright institutions: The development of the mobile music business in Japan and Korea

Abstract

In order to understand how IT impacts at the industry level, this paper adopts a theory of the coevolution of technological innovations and copyright institutions and applies it to examine how the mobile music business in Japan and Korea has developed. In Japan, mobile music business is controlled by incumbent recording companies and is complementary to offline CD sales. In Korea, however, the online music business (including mobile and fixed-internet) is dominated by mobile carriers and has replaced offline businesses, which has caused disruptive changes in the music industry structure. This paper suggests that diverging national copyright institutions give rise to the contrasting industrial changes, which in turn emphasizes how political processes drive the interactions between technologies and institutions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.