Music & the Entertainment Economy

Sonic Unyon label HQ in Hamilton, Ontario This Friday, December 4 the Martin Prosperity Institute’s Kevin Stolarick will participate in a panel discussion on “Acting Locally” at the Hamilton Music Awards Careers in Music conference at Mohawk College. Admission is free for secondary and post-secondary students. The details: This year’s HMA “Careers in Music” Conference [...]

Once again the Economist has a thoughtful perspective on the challenges facing the music business. This piece points to the rise of distributors who provide music for free (but legally) by monetizing the audio streams in a variety of creative ways: The past year has seen rapid growth of digital music services that accept the [...]

New research from our Insights series out today: The Great Musical North. An excerpt: While the public perception exists that Canada is a hot spot for music and musicians, a comparison with the global leader in music production – the United States – helps us to separate perception from reality. We find that Canada has [...]

A great NYT infographic illustrates the shift over time in music format sales. In the accompanying opinion piece Charles Blow suggests a deathwatch for the industry is in order. But Australian digital entrepreneur Nick Crocker paints a much brighter picture, one that he backs up with his own data. While the conventional business of collecting [...]

A 2008 report from the UN Development Program explores the economic dimension of the creative economy’s contribution to the development process. Here are some highlights. World exports of recorded music tripled between 1996 and 2005, despite the dramatic drop in music sales  in the developed world: On the basis of available figures, world exports of [...]

Richard has a new post pointing to Robert Austin and Lee Devin’s paper on why artists deserve to earn a living at their craft. Harvard Business prof Austin has also done work on the extraordinary management skills of Miles Davis and studied the factors behind the Medici String Quartet’s excellence in creative collaboration.