Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster

Joel Waldfogel

No 17503, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Recent technological changes may have altered the balance between technology and copyright law for digital products. While file-sharing has reduced revenue, other technological changes have reduced the costs of bringing creative works to market. As a result, we don't know whether the effective copyright protection currently available provides adequate incentives to bring forth a steady stream of valuable new products. This paper assesses the quality of new recorded music since Napster, using three independent approaches. The first is an index of the quantity of high-quality music based on critics' retrospective lists. The second and third approaches rely directly on music sales and airplay data, respectively, using of the idea that if one vintage's music is better than another's, its superior quality should generate higher sales or greater airplay through time, after accounting for depreciation. The three resulting indices of vintage quality for the past half-century are both consistent with each other and with other historical accounts of recorded music quality. There is no evidence of a reduction in the quality of music released since Napster, and the two usage-based indices suggest an increase since 1999. Hence, researchers and policymakers thinking about the strength of copyright protection should supplement their attention to producer surplus with concern for consumer surplus as well.

JEL-codes: K11 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-com, nep-cul, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-law
Note: IO LE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as Joel Waldfogel, 2012. "Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 715 - 740.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17503.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster (2012)
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:nbr:nberwo:17503

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17503

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().