Do entrepreneurs construct new cognitive frameworks or adapt existing ones in unstable, transforming industry contexts, and what importance do existing mental models, in particular the value chain, take on for them? The official discourses, mission and vision statements of the 21 most visible online music ventures were analyzed using mixed methods to capture the representations of the digital music industry of the entrepreneurs at their helm. The managerial cognition of digital music entrepreneurs challenges all the dominant logics and industry recipes of the traditional music industry and encounters no cognitive barriers. The cognitive frame of the value chain remains prevalent however in the representations of digital music entrepreneurs, and restrains them from embracing the specificities of the creative industries.