Industries Against the Digital Revolution ? Institutional Maintenance and Artifacts in the French Recorded Music Industry

In this paper, we examine the issue of how certain actors tend to maintain institutionalized elements, in spite of significant technological and social change. In particular, we focus on the notion of artifacts, which represent one type of institutional carriers, but mostly overlooked in the institutional literature. We approach this issue through an in-depth study of actors’ efforts to maintain institutions in a “mature” creative industry such as the French recorded music from 2004 to 2008. Our study focuses on the relationship and interaction between actors engaged in institutional maintaining and artifacts. To do this, we have interviewed 26 different individuals in the music sector and constituted a rich base of secondary data. Our results point out that the recorded music industry, in spite of a so-called digital revolution, is still framed by persistent artifacts. These latter convey particular rules, norms and understandings that impede some potentialities of the digital revolution. We also underline the active efforts of some actors to defend existing institutionalized arrangements, especially through manipulation of artifacts.