In this essay I will examine the extent to which the music economy has entered a post-industrial state. I will do this by first highlighting the definition of post-industrialism and showing how it has affected musicians today; and consequently how it has affected my personal and professional development within the music industry. I will highlight interesting factors such as the different interpretations of how we define an era, the place of the creative industries in a post-industrial society and areas of my own professional development, goals and training. The concept of post-industrialism is a term coined by American sociologist Daniel Bell in his 1974 book "The Coming Of Post-Industrial Society" in which he characterized it by the "centrality of theoretical knowledge as a source of innovation and political formation within society" (Business Dictionary, 2014), this is strongly Western-centric, in which the emphasis is on a society that views knowledge as power and technology as the instrument of those which compose it (Targ, 1976). This can currently only exist in the global West (Gibson, 1993), in which its members are able to achieve industrialization as an earlier societal state, so as to recognize its departure towards a post-industrial state (Wikipedia , 2014). The characteristics that define this departure can be identified as follows: Fewer and fewer people working in menial jobs, more and more people entering higher and quaternary education and working, the dominance of the service sector, lower levels increasingly high rates of urbanization and, as noted earlier, the dominant dominance of technology and theoretical knowledge that form the basis of innovation. .As highlighted previously, the concept of post-ind...... middle of paper ......nment or Entitlement: Rethinking higher music education. [online] Available at: Whitman, B., 2004. A Singular Christmas. [online] Available on: Wikipedia, 2014. Post-industrial society. [online] Available at:Bell, D., 2008. The Coming Of Post-Industrial SocietyGibson, D., 1993. POST-INDUSTRIALISM: PROSPERITY OR DECLINE?Block, F., Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic DiscourseCollins, K , The future is already happening: industrial music, dystopia and machine aestheticsDomanic, P., 2004. The emergence of a post-industrial musical economy? Music and ICT synergies in Stockholm, Sweden.