Determinants of music copyright violations on the university campus

The protection of copyrights in the music industry has been of paramount concern as the popularity of digital music players, personal websites, and file-sharing continues to grow, each of which subsequently contributes to the persistence of Internet music piracy. While the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) links file-sharing to copyright piracy, others argue that file-sharing allows maximum exposure of artists’ music which in turn increases its value. While this debate continues, little empirical research has specifically addressed the behavioral aspects of the consumer. In this paper, we use survey data on university students to study how attitudes toward copyright law along with economic and demographic factors affect the extent of music copyright violations. We find that while students are responsive to economic incentives and perceptions of risk, the extent of these incentives has not reversed the overall propensity to engage in file-sharing.

How effective are international copyright conventions in the music industry?

The paper is concerned with the issue of whether international copyright legislation is effective in curbing audio software counterfeiting. The paper finds that copyright conventions have not been effective in reducing audio counterfeiting to comparatively low levels. This result holds even when allowances are made for the duration of copyright convention membership and the specificity of the articles of the convention. Economic development is found to be the main determinant of low counterfeit levels. This would tend to support anecdotal evidence which indicates that economic development is a necessary condition for the active recognition of audio property rights by the general public, judiciary and police. It is also consistent with a view that pirate audio software, being an inferior good, has a more buoyant market in less developed economies. From a policy perspective the research would seem to suggest that the extensive efforts and copious attention to detail by legal experts has made little impact on counterfeit activity and is secondary in importance to the socio-economic environment in which these laws are being applied.     

New technology and market structure: Evidence from the music recording industry

This paper explores how new scale-reducing technology induced two periods of substantial new entry into the music recording industry. Many of the new firms were product innovators, whose products became popular with consumers. This in turn leads to shifts in the distribution of industry market share, and hence market structure. Reconcentration in the industry resulted largely from horizontal mergers, among other reasons. New digital distribution networks may induce a third-wave of industry deconcentration.     

Intellectual property and optimal copyright protection

Copyright protection, or more generally, intellectual property rights, can be regarded as a means for the stimulation of production of information goods. This paper analyses the basic problem of production and dissemination of information and the role of copyright protection as an incentive for the producers of creative works. Using a simple model, it is shown that not only a cause for limiting the extent of copyright protection does exist, but that also an argument for a minimum level of protection can be found. Even optimal copyright protection, given the restriction that production and dissemination of information goods has to be co-ordinated by a market mechanism, however, does not lead to a first-best (allocatively efficient) solution. Hence, the judgment that copyright protection is the best solution to the basic problem can be grounded only on a comparative institutional approach.Indeed, one has ample reason to despair of finding a legal tenet that governs the rights of authors and artists. There exists no legal principle by which the state is forced to grant to authors a right in their creation. They cannot claim any right thereupon. This is not to say that the state shall not award such a right. On the contrary, there is every reason to treat them like the most favoured workers, as they deliver a work that is more robust than ashlar, and bring food that does not decay...     

Past,present and future: music economics at the crossroads

This paper contextualises research on the economics of music. The papers considered represent a crossroad in economics music research. One branch is the most heavily explored area of the impact of digital technology on consumption of music. The others comprise one entirely new topic which is crowd-sourced funding of new music recordings. The other topics are extremely old in terms of relevance but very new in terms of there being little prior economic analysis. These are environmental damages from musical activity and the efficiency of belonging to a pop–rock musical ensemble versus being a solo artist.     

The structure of the American book publishing industry

This paper investigates several structural elements of the American book publishing industry in order to resolve two conflicting viewpoints advanced by publishing figures regarding intra-industry competition. The evidence presented indicates that the minimum optimal production scale (0.30 to 0.70 percent of industry's employment) is too small to obstruct entry, to preclude the existence of a large number of publishers, and to foreclose from it a high degree of competition.     

Economics of cultural tourism: issues and perspectives

The special issue aims at exploring, with an economic perspective, the interconnections between cultural participation, in all its expressions, and tourism organization and patterns with the purpose of understanding economic effects, emerging trends and policy implications. The expanding notion of the cultural consumption of tourists makes the definition of cultural tourism increasingly elusive. Empirical investigations of the relationships between cultural participation and cultural heritage and tourism offer interesting hints in many directions. This introduction briefly overviews the premise of this special issue, the literature and the several perspectives taken by the included articles. Aside from their cultural topics—general, intangible or temporary—these essays all tackle some important economic dimensions of tourism. We encourage cultural economists to invest more in these fascinating areas as more than just intellectual tourists.     

On the complementarity between online and offline music consumption: the case of free streaming

From a representative survey of 2,000 individuals, we study whether consumption of music through streaming services, like Spotify or YouTube, is a substitute or a complement to physical music consumption modes, such as CDs and live music. Controlling for the taste for music, various socio-demographic characteristics and the usual determinants of music consumption either offline (radio, TV, friends/relatives) or online (online recommendations, social networks), our results show that free music streaming (where the consumer does not possess the music but only has access to it) has no significant effect on CD sales and affects positively live music attendance, but only for national or international artists who are more likely to be available on streaming services.     

Cultural and Sport Economics: Conceptual Twins?

Is there a role for sports economics in arts research? Despite references to similarities between the arts and sports (especially community impacts, demand interdependencies, and the presence of superstars), the two burgeoning literatures operate in near isolation from one another. This parochialism is not justified by legitimate distinctions; arts labor analysis, in particular, could benefit from sports research. This paper demonstrates this proposition with a focus on: team production functions and income dispersion; unions and rent distribution; managerial and director productivity; earnings functions and changing talent distributions related to competing superstar theories; and career development, screening and human capital theory.     

Tribal art market: signs and signals

In this paper, we present a model for the marketability of a Tribal artwork, and we test this model empirically using a unique hand-collected dataset, which comprises the worldwide Tribal art market auctions between 1999 and 2008. Our results show a significant relationship between the probability of an artwork to be sold and several signs and signals. The effect of the auction estimated prices on the probability of sales is nonlinear and allows us to divide the Tribal art market into two price regimes. In the low-price regime, the effect of the auction estimated price on the probability of sales is negative. In the high-price regime, the effect of the auction estimated price on the probability of sales is positive.