IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/iepoli/v34y2016icp1-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Even the losers get lucky sometimes: New products and the evolution of music quality since Napster

Author

Listed:
  • Aguiar, Luis
  • Waldfogel, Joel

Abstract

Using comprehensive digital sales data by time and vintage on the US, Canada, and 15 European countries, we infer the evolution of music vintage quality, finding that vintage service flow has increased since 2000. We explain the result with unpredictability of music quality at the time of investment along with growing releases. Evidence shows (a) products with modest prospects at release, – from artists on independent labels and from new artists, – occupy a growing share of the top products; and (b) despite growth in the number of products, sales are growing more concentrated.

Suggested Citation

  • Aguiar, Luis & Waldfogel, Joel, 2016. "Even the losers get lucky sometimes: New products and the evolution of music quality since Napster," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 1-15.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:34:y:2016:i:c:p:1-15
    DOI: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2015.12.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016762451600007X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.infoecopol.2015.12.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rob, Rafael & Waldfogel, Joel, 2006. "Piracy on the High C's: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(1), pages 29-62, April.
    2. Zentner, Alejandro, 2006. "Measuring the Effect of File Sharing on Music Purchases," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(1), pages 63-90, April.
    3. Luis Aguiar & Joel Waldfogel, 2018. "Quality Predictability and the Welfare Benefits from New Products: Evidence from the Digitization of Recorded Music," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 492-524.
    4. Mortimer, Julie Holland & Nosko, Chris & Sorensen, Alan, 2012. "Supply responses to digital distribution: Recorded music and live performances," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 3-14.
    5. Joel Waldfogel, 2012. "Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 715-740.
    6. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2007. "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(1), pages 1-42.
    7. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2010. "File Sharing and Copyright," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(1), pages 19-55.
    8. Erik Brynjolfsson & Yu (Jeffrey) Hu & Michael D. Smith, 2003. "Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety at Online Booksellers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(11), pages 1580-1596, November.
    9. Handke, Christian, 2012. "Digital copying and the supply of sound recordings," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 15-29.
    10. Connolly, Marie & Krueger, Alan B., 2006. "Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 667-719, Elsevier.
    11. Luis Aguiar & Joel Waldfogel, 2015. "Revenue, New Products, and the Evolution of Music Quality since Napster," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2015-03, Joint Research Centre.
    12. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2010. "File Sharing and Copyright," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 10, pages 19-55, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joel Waldfogel, 2017. "The Random Long Tail and the Golden Age of Television," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 1-25.
    2. Savelkoul, Ruben, 2020. "Superstars vs the long tail: How does music piracy affect digital song sales for different segments of the industry?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    3. Marc Ivaldi & Ambre Nicolle & Frank Verboven & Jiekai Zhang, 2024. "Displacement and complementarity in the recorded music industry: evidence from France," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 48(1), pages 43-94, March.
    4. Joel Waldfogel, 2017. "How Digitization Has Created a Golden Age of Music, Movies, Books, and Television," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 195-214, Summer.
    5. T. Randolph Beard & George S. Ford & Gilad Sorek & Lawrence J. Spiwak, 2018. "Piracy, Imitation, and Optimal Copyright Policy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 815-830, January.
    6. Kevin J. Boudreau, 2018. "Amateurs Crowds & Professional Entrepreneurs as Platform Complementors," NBER Working Papers 24512, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. François Moreau & Patrik Wikström & Ola Haampland & Rune Johannessen, 2024. "Alternative payment models in the music streaming market: A comparative approach based on stream-level data," Post-Print hal-04679366, HAL.
    8. Shinichi Yamaguchi, 2021. "The effect of online C2C markets on new-product-purchasing behavior: an empirical analysis of Japanese selling apps," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-21, January.
    9. Marc Bourreau & François Moreau & Patrik Wikström, 2022. "Does digitization lead to the homogenization of cultural content?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 427-453, January.
    10. Essling, Christian & Koenen, Johannes & Peukert, Christian, 2017. "Competition for attention in the digital age: The case of single releases in the recorded music industry," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 26-40.
    11. Luis Aguiar & Joel Waldfogel, 2018. "Quality Predictability and the Welfare Benefits from New Products: Evidence from the Digitization of Recorded Music," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 492-524.
    12. Telang, Rahul & Waldfogel, Joel, 2018. "Piracy and new product creation: A Bollywood story," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 1-11.
    13. Frederik Juul Jensen, 2024. "Rethinking royalties: alternative payment systems on music streaming platforms," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 48(3), pages 439-462, September.
    14. Tobias Kretschmer & Christian Peukert, 2020. "Video Killed the Radio Star? Online Music Videos and Recorded Music Sales," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 776-800, September.
    15. Johannes Loh, 2022. "Selection, Consumption, and New Music Exploration in an Online Social Network: A Dyadic Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 10120, CESifo.
    16. Aguiar, Luis & Martens, Bertin, 2016. "Digital music consumption on the Internet: Evidence from clickstream data," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 27-43.
    17. Christian Peukert & Margaritha Windisch, 2023. "The Economics of Copyright in the Digital Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 10687, CESifo.
    18. George, Lisa M., 2016. "Mobile, Media & More: Contributions and Developments at Information Economics and Policy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-2.
    19. Daniel Kaimann & Ilka Tanneberg & Joe Cox, 2021. "“I will survive”: Online streaming and the chart survival of music tracks," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 3-20, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mary J. Benner & Joel Waldfogel, 2016. "The Song Remains the Same? Technological Change and Positioning in the Recorded Music Industry," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(3), pages 129-147, September.
    2. Leung, Tin Cheuk, 2015. "Music piracy: Bad for record sales but good for the iPod?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-12.
    3. Joel Waldfogel, 2017. "How Digitization Has Created a Golden Age of Music, Movies, Books, and Television," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 195-214, Summer.
    4. Lee, Jonathan F., 2018. "Purchase, pirate, publicize: Private-network music sharing and market album sales," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 35-55.
    5. Joel Waldfogel, 2015. "Digitization and the Quality of New Media Products: The Case of Music," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy, pages 407-442, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Aguiar, Luis & Martens, Bertin, 2016. "Digital music consumption on the Internet: Evidence from clickstream data," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 27-43.
    7. Laurina Zhang, 2018. "Intellectual Property Strategy and the Long Tail: Evidence from the Recorded Music Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 24-42, January.
    8. Tyrowicz, Joanna & Krawczyk, Michal & Hardy, Wojciech, 2020. "Friends or foes? A meta-analysis of the relationship between “online piracy” and the sales of cultural goods," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    9. Gans, Joshua S., 2015. "“Selling Out” and the impact of music piracy on artist entry," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 58-64.
    10. Markus Pasche, 2014. "Welfare Effects of Endogenous Copyright Enforcement - the Case of Digital Goods," Jena Economics Research Papers 2014-008, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    11. Savelkoul, Ruben, 2020. "Superstars vs the long tail: How does music piracy affect digital song sales for different segments of the industry?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    12. Wojciech Hardy & Michal Krawczyk & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2015. "Friends or foes? A meta-analysis of the link between "online piracy" and sales of cultural goods," Working Papers 2015-23, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    13. Herz, Benedikt & Kiljanski, Kamil, 2016. "Movie Piracy and Displaced Sales in Europe: Evidence from Six Countries," MPRA Paper 80817, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Oberholzer-Gee, Felix & Strumpf, Koleman, 2016. "The effect of file sharing on record sales, revisited," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 61-66.
    15. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2012. "Music piracy: A case of “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer”," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 30-39.
    16. Ratchford, Brian & Soysal, Gonca & Zentner, Alejandro & Gauri, Dinesh K., 2022. "Online and offline retailing: What we know and directions for future research," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 152-177.
    17. Christian Peukert & Margaritha Windisch, 2023. "The Economics of Copyright in the Digital Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 10687, CESifo.
    18. Luis Aguiar & Joel Waldfogel, 2018. "Quality Predictability and the Welfare Benefits from New Products: Evidence from the Digitization of Recorded Music," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 492-524.
    19. Frosio, Giancarlo F., 2016. "Digital piracy debunked: a short note on digital threats and intermediary liability," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 5(1), pages 1-22.
    20. Joel Waldfogel, 2011. "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music Since Napster," NBER Working Papers 16882, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Digital music; Digitization; Copyright;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:34:y:2016:i:c:p:1-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505549 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.