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 [...]
October 30, 2009
How Can We Tell if a Hit is a Hit?
Scholars who analyze popular music (for example, how it is affected by industry concentration or other social and historical events) have often relied on the Billboard music charts as their data source. The data informing Billboard song rankings include a combination of album sales (both physical and digital) and terrestrial radio airplay. But musical consumption [...]
August 26, 2009
File-Sharing, Profits, and Innovation
Has file-sharing diminished music industry profits and musical innovation? These are the central questions of a new working paper by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. Their answers: no and no. Here are two of their key charts concerning the first question. This one shows a marked increase in concert prices since file-sharing took off. And [...]
August 7, 2009
Deathwatch or Green Shoots?
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 [...]
July 2, 2009
The Business of Music in Developing Countries
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 [...]
June 29, 2009
Business learns from music
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.
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November 12, 2009
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