Supply Responses to Digital Distribution: Recorded Music and Live Performances
33 Pages Posted: 1 Nov 2010 Last revised: 10 Aug 2022
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Supply Responses to Digital Distribution: Recorded Music and Live Performances
Date Written: October 2010
Abstract
Changes in technologies for reproducing and redistributing digital goods (e.g., music, movies, software, books) have dramatically affected profitability of these goods, and raised concerns for future development of socially valuable digital products. However, broader illegitimate distribution of digital goods may have offsetting demand implications for legitimate sales of complementary non-digital products. We examine the negative impact of file-sharing on recorded music sales and offsetting implications for live concert performances. We find that file-sharing reduces album sales but increases live performance revenues for small artists, perhaps through increased awareness. The impact on live performance revenues for large, well-known artists is negligible.
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