Agent based simulation for modelling the distribution of online music

The online content market for music is changing rapidly with the spread of technology and innovative business models. It is difficult for suppliers of online content to anticipate these developments and the effects of their businesses. The paper describes a multi-agent simulation to model possible scenarios in this market and argues that agent-based modeling can be a useful tool in thinking about future developments in these markets. It demonstrates this by applying the model to two simple scenarios of interest in the domain, the disintermediation of the value chain in the Internet and the lock-in of consumers to Apple's iTunes download platform.