Digitization has importantly expanded the scope for reusing music in movies, a process known as music synchronization. We use panel data on Netflix and Shazam to estimate the causal effect of music synchronization on the discovery of reused songs. Our results show that songs are substantially...

The audio compact disc (CD) has been a common item in most households ever since its introduction in the early 1980s. A pioneer format in digital music, it captured the imagination of many at the time of its inception. In this article, I present the CD as a business history case, from being a...

This paper quantifies the degree of competition among Wal-Mart and different retail channels by exploiting a unique dataset that describes a consumer’s choice of store. Using a discrete choice model, I estimate a consumer’s choice of retailer in the sales market for DVDs among online, mass...

This book examines the creative and flexible approaches independent jazz labels use to navigate today’s challenging music industry landscape. By combining desk research with in-depth interviews with label owners and digital distributors, this study sheds light on how these micro-enterprises...

We propose a risk neutral approach to forecast the cashflows of music catalogs, based on historical revenue data. We use a discounted cashflows formula to produce reasonable ranges of multipliers for these assets, based on the age of the catalog, the last-twelve-months revenue and the duration...

Individuals who engage in “judging” – that is, rendering a determination in a dispute or contest between two parties – might be influenced by public pressure to favor one of the parties. Many rules and arrangements seek to insulate such individuals from public pressure or to address the...

This study examines how instant online video sharing affects artists' musical streams during the pandemic. On average, the use of the TikTok app significantly increases artists' streams, by approximately 5%. This increase is even higher for male, European and dj Mag 2020 new entry artists.

This study examines how instant online video sharing affects artists' musical streams during the pandemic. On average, the use of the TikTok app significantly increases artists' streams, by approximately 5%. This increase is even higher for male, European and dj Mag 2020 new entry artists.

This paper studies the role of consumer learning in the demand for recorded music by examining the impact of an artist%u2019s new album on sales of past and future albums. Using detailed album sales data for a sample of 355 artists, we show that the release of a new album increases sales of old...

Recording industry revenue has fallen sharply in the last three years, and some -- but not all -- observers attribute this to file sharing. We collect new data on albums obtained via purchase and downloading, as well as the consumers' valuations of these albums, among a sample of US college...

New information technology has reduced marginal production and distribution costs of information goods to negligible levels and promises to revolutionize many industries. Unpaid copies of digital products can be as good as paid first-generation copies, and their availability can undermine the...

We estimate the patterns of catalogue availability (extensive margin) and number of clicks per title (intensive margin) using a novel data set containing the information on Netflix catalogues and viewing across 20 countries. Our results show evidence of the gravity framework explaining both...

Over the last decade, watching videos online has become one of the primary uses of the internet, with streaming services accounting for more than 60% of global internet traffic. In this paper we use a novel data set on Netflix, the largest streaming platform worldwide, to estimate the patterns...

Does watching more pirated streaming video mean spending less time watching non-pirated streaming video? This study measures whether, and how much, time spent watching pirated video crowds out time spent on streaming video apps. While prior studies have estimated the impact of piracy on sales...

Platform power is a societal concern on many levels. Thus, we argue that addressing it with the common market competition approach is limited. The research we present aims to develop and test an alternative approach to conceptualizing and assessing platform power. We propose a framework that...

Hollywood films are generally released first in the United States and then later abroad, with some variation in lags across films and countries. With the growth in movie piracy since the appearance of BitTorrent in 2003, films have become available through illegal piracy immediately after...

The creative industries have frequently expressed concern that they can't compete with freely available copies of their content. Competing with free is particularly concerning for movie stu-dios, whose content may be more prone to single-use consumption than other industries such as music. This...

Large technology companies have for some time claimed a “golden age” for creativity has resulted from expanded copyright law exceptions facilitating the digitisation of content (e.g. music, film and books) and the spread of the Internet over the past 20 years. This will be referred to as the...

We study the heterogeneous effects of online video platforms on the sales volume and sales distribution of recorded music. Identification comes from two natural experiments in Germany. In 2009, virtually all music videos were blocked from YouTube due to a legal dispute. In 2013, the dedicated...