Entrepreneurial Opportunities with Music: The Battle for Listeners’ Attention

This chapter examines how music entrepreneurs turn ideas into practical opportunities within the limits of the attention economy. Using Sara Sarasvathy’s framework, it identifies three types of entrepreneurial opportunities: recognition, discovery, and creation, showing how each relates to music entrepreneurship. It also discusses how the nature of music as a commodity (private, common, toll, and public) influences entrepreneurial strategies, and how streaming has intensified competition for attention, blurring the lines between promotion and distribution and affecting production trends such as shorter tracks and earlier hooks. Lastly, the chapter considers strategies for creating and harnessing attention as a key resource in music projects.