Competition in the Digital Age
In a very interesting talk, music producer, Steve Albini, reviewed the impact of the internet on the music industry’s woes. I can’t do it justice in any summary but he basically said that, for bands, things were not very good prior to the internet. The reason for this is that recording was expensive, distribution was …
Continue reading "Digitised Products: How about just giving up?"
Piracy is everywhere but in music artists' supply. That's the strong impression I get from the academic literature on the subject. There is evidence that piracy has reduced straight-up music sales revenue but overall it is unclear whether digitisation has impacted adversely on artist returns (because they make up losses with concert revenue and the …
Bill Gates once famously argued that if people are going to pirate software, he'd rather them pirate Microsoft's. This is hardly surprising in that Microsoft products run on the majority of PCs in China (traditionally a poster-child for software piracy) and, by design or accident, has meant that Microsoft is a leader there with its …
