Selling Less of More: The Impact of Digitization on Record Companies

Marc Bourreau, Michel Gensollen (), François Moreau and Patrick Waelbroeck
Additional contact information
Michel Gensollen: ECOGE - Economie Gestion - I3 SES - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation de Telecom Paris - Télécom Paris - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, SES - Département Sciences Economiques et Sociales - Télécom Paris - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this paper, we use data from a survey of 151 French record companies to test the ‘‘long-tail'' hypothesis at the level of the firm. More specifically, we test whether, following the ‘‘selling less of more'' principle coined by Anderson (2006), record companies that have adapted to digitization (at various levels: artists' scouting, distribution, and promotion) release more new albums without having higher overall sales. We construct a production function in which the output is produced from conventional inputs of labor and capital, as well as inputs that are more specific to the recorded music industry. We consider two types of output: a commercial output (albums sales) and a creative output (number of new albums released). We show that labels that have adapted to digitization are more efficient in respect of creative output, but that there is no effect of adaptation to digitization on the commercial output, which is consistent with the predictions of the long-tail hypothesis.

Keywords: Recorded music industry; Digitization; Long tail; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-08
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01345110v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Cultural Economics, 2013, 37 (3), pp.327-346. ⟨10.1007/s10824-012-9184-4⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-01345110v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: “Selling less of more?” The impact of digitization on record companies (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01345110

DOI: 10.1007/s10824-012-9184-4

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().