How embeddedness and social mechanisms affect the economic performance in the music industry: The case of Mescal music

Like for most cultural industries, the music industry’s products have a twofold nature: They are simultaneously artistic and economic products. For this and other reasons (such as high environmental uncertainty, high human asset specificity, etc.), the music industry represents a very difficult context in which to successfully compete. To face this high market complexity, two main organizational responses have emerged: On the one hand, we have few large multinational firms (‘majors’); on the other hand we have a large number of smaller and loosely structured firms (‘independents’). The main aim of this paper is to study the case of an Italian independent label, Mescal Music, which has achieved a relevant market share in the Italian market. In order to investigate which organizational factors have led Mescal to such a relevant success, we adopted a case study methodology combining different data collection methods: archives’ analysis, interviews, questionnaires, secondary sources and direct observation.