Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music since Napster
Citation: Joel Waldfogel (2011/03) Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music since Napster. NBER Working Paper No. 16882 (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music since Napster
Download: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jwaldfog/pdfs/w16882.pdf
Tagged: Economics
(RSS) napster (RSS), copyright (RSS), filesharing (RSS), economics (RSS)
Summary
Through analysis of time series of acclaimed (eg highly rated, on best of lists) albums and songs, author finds no evidence of decline in quality music releases or in development of new artists post-Napster, thus no evidence for incentive theory of copyright for recorded music. Some indication that independent labels are playing an increasing role relative to major labels found. Lack of a counterfactual (world without filesharing) means only tentative conclusions may be drawn.
Theoretical and Practical Relevance
Author indicates that further research is needed, in particular for fields other than music. At the least this research undermines justification for costly measures designed to prevent file sharing on the basis of maintaining copyright incentive to create new high quality music.
https://www.hse.ru/data/2011/09/28/1266819431/Waldfogel_update.pdf appears to be an updated version of the paper, with a new title: Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster
