Economic analysis of music copyright : income, media and performances

"Chris Anderson's initial L̀ong Tail' analysis was released in 2004 just as the wave of mergers and acquisitions was sweeping the music publishing and radio industries. Music industry executives began looking for Anderson's L̀ong Tail' effect and with it the implied redistribution of royalty income from popular songs to long dormant and forgotten works in their catalogs. These music publishers had hoped to further maximize the value of their copyright assets (lyrics and melody) in their existing music catalogs as the sale of compact disks diminished, and consumers switched their purchasing and listening habits to new digital formats in music technology such as the iPod." "This book deals with the measurement of skewness, heavy tails and asymmetry in performance royalty income data in the music industry from an Economics of Art and Culture perspective. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a general introduction to the many supply and demand economic factors that are related to music performance royalty payments. The second part is an applied econometrics section that provides modeling and in-depth analysis of income data from a songwriter, music publisher and blanket licensing perspective. The book will appeal to researchers and students in cultural economics, media and statistics as well as general readers and professionals in the music publishing industry." "As a Senior Economist for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) using both internal and licensed external proprietary data, the author found that the so-called s̀uperstar effects' are still present in performance royalty income. Success is still concentrated on a relatively few copyright holders or members who can be grouped into h̀eavy tails' of the empirical income distribution in a departure from Anderson's L̀ong Tail' analysis