Music & Ethics eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Slicing the Pie: The Search for an Equitable Recorded Music Economy","authors":"Aram Sinnreich","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2530161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2530161","url":null,"abstract":"In November 2014, pop music icon and New York City’s recently anointed ‘Global Welcome Ambassador’ Taylor Swift, perhaps the year’s most ubiquitous American public figure, made headlines by absenting herself from a hip and increasingly popular venue: the Spotify streaming music service. Swift, whose popularity and income were unquestionably propelled by avid listening on terrestrial radio, YouTube and services like Spotify, had fired a warning salvo with a July Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which she stated unequivocally that ‘music should not be free,’ because, in her words, ‘Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.'This one-two punch set off a firestorm among musicians, music industry executives and music fans, who promptly divided themselves into two opposing camps: Swift’s supporters, who view Spotify and its ilk as exploiters of artistry and debasers of culture, and Spotify’s supporters, who view the service as an exemplar of media economics in the age of digital ubiquity and a bulwark against the deleterious effects of online piracy.Although both camps seem genuinely motivated by a principled love of music and a fundamental belief in some notion of ‘fairness,’ neither side got the story right, though each version contains elements of the truth. In order to understand fully the role of streaming in the evolving recorded music economy and to evaluate whether it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for musicians and fans, it’s necessary to take a broader and more historical perspective, and to understand streaming in contrast to other modes of distribution and market exploitation. Since its inception, the recorded music industry – composed of recording artists, composers, record labels, publishers and a myriad of other stakeholders – has been a tumultuous, ever-changing economic battle royale. Each new law, technology or market shift has presented strategic threats and opportunities enabling some to gain a ‘larger piece of the pie’ while others divvy up the dwindling remains. Yet the market disruptions introduced by digital media at the turn of the twenty-first century have introduced a degree of volatility and uncertainty that makes the previous century’s ups and downs look stable and placid by comparison. One effect of these disruptions has been to intensify the ongoing battle – legacy stakeholders seek to protect their margins and market dominance, rival upstarts wish to carve out their own slices and creative professionals see a long-awaited opportunity to exert some financial autonomy and creative control over the product.To the extent that these disruptions are covered in the press or understood by the general public, the situation is often depicted monochromatically, from the perspective of a given stakeholder. In addition to Swift’s campaign against Spotify, other examples include calls for broadcast royalties for recording artists by musicians like Blake Morgan, campaign","PeriodicalId":281661,"journal":{"name":"Music & Ethics eJournal","volume":"28 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114135003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Profit Leak? Pre-Release File Sharing and the Music Industry","authors":"R. Hammond","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2059356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2059356","url":null,"abstract":"Using data from an exclusive file-sharing Web site that allows users to share music files using the BitTorrent protocol, I exploit exogenous variation in the availability of sound recordings in file-sharing networks to isolate the causal effect of file sharing of an album on its sales. Using within-album variation in illegal downloads and sales, I find that the effect is essentially zero: The elasticity of sales with respect to illegal downloads is one-tenth of one percentage point. However, the finding that file sharing is not harmful to individual artists is not inconsistent with the well-documented fact that file sharing is harmful to the music industry (the fallacy of composition). More important, I find that file sharing benefits more established and popular artists who are signed to major labels, which is consistent with recent industry trends.","PeriodicalId":281661,"journal":{"name":"Music & Ethics eJournal","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126958033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}