Empirical Copyright: A Case Study of File Sharing, Sales Revenue, and Music Output

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2016

Journal Title

Supreme Court Economic Review

ISSN

0736-9921

DOI

10.1086/695561

Abstract

A simple intuition justifies copyright: more revenue means more original works. In this article, I test that intuition by examining how the rise of file sharing, and the contemporaneous decline in record sales, affected music output. Using the appearance of new artists and new songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as a measure of music output, I show that the decline in sales was associated, ceteris paribus, with (i) fewer new artists but (ii) more hit songs by each new artist. Because the second effect outweighed the first, the rise of file sharing and the contemporaneous decline in record sales was associated with a net increase in the production of new hit songs.

First Page

261

Last Page

322

Num Pages

62

Volume Number

24

Issue Number

1

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Notes

The publication year for this volume and issue is officially 2016, but the volume became available in 2018.

Editor

Murat C. Mungan

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