The Economic Problem with Music – and How Music Streaming Could Solve It

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Economic Problem with Music – and How Music Streaming Could Solve It The Economic Problem with Music – And How Music Streaming Could Solve it Prof. Dr. Peter Tschmuck Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1 1030 Vienna, Austria Tel.: ++43-1-71155-3415 email: [email protected] webpage: http://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/ Contents Music as an economic good The challenges of the music streaming business model The revenue streams for Austrian indie labels The Economics of Music Streaming Music as an economic good The Economics of Music Streaming Music as a public good (Samuelson 1954) Private goods Excludability in consumption Rivalry in consumption Public goods Non-excludability in consumption Non-rivalry in consumption => „Free-riding“ problem The Economics of Music Streaming Music as a club/toll good (Buchanan 1965) When introducing a price mechanism – think of a toll road – a club good becomes excludable in consumption, but it is still non-rival. All music events with an access system – e.g. concerts and opera houses as well as music festivals – can therefore be defined as club/toll goods. The ticket price makes them excludable in consumption, but listening to the performances is still non-rival. In a concert, an individual appropriates the entire benefit from listening to the music despite the presence of other music lovers. The Economics of Music Streaming Music as an information good (Shapiro & Varian 1998) Originally, music was a public good (e.g. as music in the liturgy and as a public court entertainment). In the 18th century impresarios turned music into a club good by staging operas and concerts and collecting entrance fees. Music printing and later sound recording transformed music into a private good with a price mechanism constituting excludability and rivalry in consumption. Commercial broadcasting turned music into a public good financed by either commercials (private radio) or fees (public radio) In the course of digitization, the public good characteristics of music became even more relevant => P2P file-sharing. The Economics of Music Streaming How to solve the public good’s problem with music? 1. Broadcasting business model: ad-supported and/or public fees 2. Record business model: privatization of consumption 3. Subscription-based music streaming: club/toll good The Economics of Music Streaming The challenges of the music streaming business model The Economics of Music Streaming Who benefits from music streaming? The artists? The Economics of Music Streaming Subscriber pays The split of a monthly premium EUR 9.99 subscription of EUR 9.99 of a music streaming service in France EUR 2.08 (20,8%) EUR 1.67 (16.7%) go remain with Spotify to the tax authority EUR 5.24 are channelled EUR 1.00 (10%) are channelled to the record labels for to the collecting societies for further distribution. They for distribution to composers, pocket EUR 4.56 (45.5%) authors and publishers EUR 0.68 (6.8%) are distributed to all Source: SNEP-Ernst & performers for their music Young study, February 2015 streamed The Economics of Music Streaming Who benefits from music streaming? The artists? Answer: not really The Economics of Music Streaming Who benefits from music streaming? The streaming services? The Economics of Music Streaming Spotify‘s revenue and cost of revenue, 2012-2016 3.500.000 3.000.000 2.500.000 2.000.000 1.500.000 in 1,000 EUR 1.000.000 500.000 0 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Subscriptions 374.600 677.890 978.565 1.744.393 2.638.493 Advertising 55.500 68.157 98.823 195.843 295.011 Cost of revenue 386.498 614.523 876.089 1.623.624 2.482.973 The Economics of Music Streaming Spotify‘s annual operating loss, 2012-2016 0 -50.000 -100.000 -150.000 -200.000 in 1,000 EUR -250.000 -300.000 -350.000 -400.000 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Operating loss -37.556 -59.136 -76.876 -91.178 -165.180 -184.490 -349.412 The Economics of Music Streaming Spotify‘s cost structure, 2012-2016 3.500.000 3.000.000 2.500.000 2.000.000 in 1,000 EUR 1.500.000 1.000.000 500.000 0 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 General and administrative 28.614 39.965 76.678 116.405 175.179 Sales and marketing 54.099 110.825 173.013 246.486 417.911 Research & development 37.946 72.723 121.030 143.307 206.853 Cost of revenue 386.498 614.523 876.089 1.623.624 2.482.973 Cost of revenue Research & development Sales and marketing General and administrative The Economics of Music Streaming SoudCloud‘s revenue and net loss, 2010-2015 30.000.000 20.000.000 10.000.000 0 -10.000.000 -20.000.000 -30.000.000 -40.000.000 -50.000.000 -60.000.000 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Revenue 1.370.000 4.330.000 8.040.000 11.280.000 17.350.000 21.100.000 Net loss -1.550.000 -4.460.000 -12.430.000 -23.110.000 -39.140.000 -51.220.000 The Economics of Music Streaming Music streaming services that failed The Economics of Music Streaming Who benefits from music streaming? The streaming services? Answer: NO The Economics of Music Streaming Who benefits from music streaming? The recording companies? The Economics of Music Streaming Universal Music Group‘s revenue growth, 2015-2017 Source: Vivendi, First Half 2017 results, August 31, 2017, p.5. The Economics of Music Streaming Universal Music Group‘s first half year 2017 results Source: Vivendi, First Half 2017 results, August 31, 2017, p.25. The Economics of Music Streaming Source: Music Business Worldwide, “Sony recorded music sales fall 6%, hampered by strength of Yen”, April 28, 2017 The Economics of Music Streaming Source: Music Business Worldwide, “Warner Music just joined the $1bn streaming record company club”, February 7, 2017 The Economics of Music Streaming MERLIN‘s member survey 2017 Key findings Annual revenue distributions increased 52% to $353m. 64% of Merlin members report that audio streaming accounts for the majority of their digital revenues (2016: 46%). 67% of Merlin members stated that digital income accounted for over half their overall business revenues. 42% of members report that services such as YouTube account for less than 5% of their digital revenues The Economics of Music Streaming Who benefits from music streaming? The recording companies? Answer: YES, … but just the majors and a few indies The Economics of Music Streaming Music streaming revenue of Austrian indie companies from digital music distributor Rebeat in 2013-2016 6.000.000 5.000.000 4.000.000 in Euro 3.000.000 2.000.000 1.000.000 0 2013 2014 2015 2016 Streaming 274.067 458.955 564.877 5.214.375 Download 1.276.704 1.283.945 2.450.744 3.774.554 The Economics of Music Streaming Music streaming revenue of indie companies in Austria from digital music distributor Rebeat in 2013 and 2016 160.000 140.000 120.000 100.000 80.000 in Euro 60.000 40.000 20.000 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 The Economics of Music Streaming Who benefits from music streaming? and of course … the music consumers The Economics of Music Streaming The Economic Problem with Music – And How Music Streaming Could Solve it Prof. Dr. Peter Tschmuck Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1 1030 Vienna, Austria Tel.: ++43-1-71155-3415 email: [email protected] webpage: http://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/.
Recommended publications
  • 1. Information As Experience Good: Information Goods Are Experience Goods
    Pricing Information Goods for Digital Libraries (Seminar aus Informationswirtschaft 4085) SS 2003 Strategies for the digital library of the WU - Focus on Rights Management Univ.-Ass. Mag. Dr. Michael Hahsler Univ. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Panny Abteilung für Informationswirtschaft Institut für Informationsverarbeitung und Informationswirtschaft Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Augasse 2-6 A-1090 Wien, AUSTRIA Telefon: 31336/6081 E-mail: [email protected] 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. Introduction ..…………………………………………………………………3 2. Information goods and the digital technology………………………………...4 Information goods ……………………………………………………………….4 The problem with information goods in digital form ………………………………...6 3. Digital Libraries……………………………………………………………….7 Definition ………………………………………………………………………7 Properties of Digital Libraries …………………………………………………….7 4. Digital Rights Management..………………………………………………….8 Architecture ………………………………………………………………………...………9 Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998…………………………………………...…..10 5. Strategies for publishers of IP………………………………………………..15 How digital technology affects the management of intellectual property ……………...15 6. Case Studies: What do other digital libraries do? …………………………...18 The National Academies Press …………………………………………………..18 The Academic Library ………………………………………………………….19 Dissertation.com ……….……...………………………………………………20 University of California Press and California ……………………………………..22 Digital Library's eScholarship program 7. EPub and strategies for ePub ……………………………………………….24 8. Literature ……………………………………………………………………27
    [Show full text]
  • The Marketing of Information in the Information Age Hofacker and Goldsmith
    The Marketing of Information in the Information Age Hofacker and Goldsmith THE MARKETING OF INFORMATION IN THE INFORMATION AGE CHARLES F. HOFACKER, Florida State University RONALD E. GOLDSMITH, Florida State University The long-standing distinction made between goods and services must now be joined by the distinction between these two categories and “information products.” The authors propose that marketing management, practice, and theory could benefit by broadening the scope of what marketers market by adding a third category besides tangible goods and intangible services. It is apparent that information is an unusual and fundamental physical and logical phenomenon from either of these. From this the authors propose that information products differ from both tangible goods and perishable services in that information products have three properties derived from their fundamental abstractness: they are scalable, mutable, and public. Moreover, an increasing number of goods and services now contain information as a distinct but integral element in the way they deliver benefits. Thus, the authors propose that marketing theory should revise the concept of “product” to explicitly include an informational component and that the implications of this revised concept be discussed. This paper presents some thoughts on the issues such discussions should address, focusing on strategic management implications for marketing information products in the information age. INTRODUCTION “information,” in addition to goods and services (originally proposed by Freiden et al. 1998), A major revolution in marketing management while identifying unique characteristics of pure and theory occurred when scholars established information products. To support this position, that “products” should not be conceptualized the authors identify key attributes that set apart solely as tangible goods, but also as intangible an information product from a good or a services.
    [Show full text]
  • Virtual Markets for Virtual Goods: the Mirror Image of Digital Copyright?
    Harvard Journal of Law & Technology Volume 18, Number 1 Fall 2004 VIRTUAL MARKETS FOR VIRTUAL GOODS: THE MIRROR IMAGE OF DIGITAL COPYRIGHT? Peter Eckersley* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction.....................................................................................86 A. Information Anarchism and Information Feudalism..................86 B. Virtual Markets for Virtual Goods.............................................92 II. Reward Systems ............................................................................94 A. Rewards and Information Production........................................94 1. Rewards for Inventions ...........................................................95 2. Rewards for Writing and Other Copyright Works ..................97 B. Decentralized Compensation Systems: Constructing “Virtual Markets” .................................................................100 1. Network Security...................................................................102 2. Human Security.....................................................................104 3. Funding Virtual Markets .......................................................106 4. One Dollar, One Vote?..........................................................111 5. Scope: Which Information Markets Could Be Made “Virtual” (and Which Ones Matter)? ..............................112 6. The Role of Social Norms.....................................................115 III. An Economic Comparison of Virtual Markets and Digital Rights Management......................................................................116
    [Show full text]
  • 3 Intellectual Property Rights for Data
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Rusche, Christian; Scheufen, Marc Research Report On (intellectual) property and other legal frameworks in the digital economy: An economic analysis of the law IW-Report, No. 48/2018 Provided in Cooperation with: German Economic Institute (IW), Cologne Suggested Citation: Rusche, Christian; Scheufen, Marc (2018) : On (intellectual) property and other legal frameworks in the digital economy: An economic analysis of the law, IW-Report, No. 48/2018, Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW), Köln This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/190945 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen
    [Show full text]
  • The Web Economy: Goods, Users, Models and Policies Michalis Vafopoulos 05/12/2011
    The Web economy: goods, users, models and policies Michalis Vafopoulos 05/12/2011 Abstract Web emerged as an antidote to the rapidly increasing quantity of accumulated knowledge and become successful because it facilitates massive participation and communication with minimum costs. Today, its enormous impact, scale and dynamism in time and space make very difficult (and sometimes impossible) to measure and anticipate the effects in human society. In addition to that, we demand from the Web to be fast, secure, reliable, all-inclusive and trustworthy in any transaction. The scope of the present article is to review a part of the Web economy literature that will help us to identify its major participants and their functions. The goal is to understand how the Web economy differs from the traditional setting and what implications have these differences. Secondarily, we attempt to establish a minimal common understanding about the incentives and properties of the Web economy. In this direction the concept of Web Goods and a new classification of Web Users are introduced and analyzed This article, is not, by any means, a thorough review of the economic literature related to the Web. We focus only on its relevant part that models the Web as a standalone economic artifact with native functionality and processes. WSSC: "webscience.org/2010/E.1 Economics and Business" 1 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... 1
    [Show full text]
  • Knowledge Goods and Nation-States
    Knowledge Goods and Nation-States Daniel J. Hemel & Lisa Larrimore Ouellette DRAFT—2/2/16 ABSTRACT. The conventional economic justification for global IP treaties such as TRIPS begins from the premise that absent coordination, nation-states will rationally underinvest in innovation incentives such as IP laws, grants, tax credits, and prizes, and that they will free-ride on each other’s knowledge production (the “underinvestment hypothesis”). Under this account, nation-states seek to solve the free-rider problem by using IP treaties to harmonize their domestic laws (the “harmonization hypothesis”). Previous authors have adopted this logic while lamenting its implications: IP appears to be a necessary evil in an interconnected world—necessary to solve the free-rider problem; lamentable because it results in sizeable deadweight losses. This account of IP treaties is informative but incomplete. The underinvestment hypothesis is robust only to the extent its assumptions about the nature of knowledge goods and the behavior of nation-states are accurate. But not all knowledge goods are global public goods, and nation-states have motivations to invest in knowledge production that the conventional account fails to capture. More fundamentally, the harmonization hypothesis rests on a misapprehension of the link between global and domestic IP laws. States can comply with IP treaties such as TRIPS while relying primarily on non-IP innovation incentives and non-price mechanisms for allocating knowledge goods within their own borders. In the extreme case, a government body subsidizes the production of a knowledge good through prizes or grants, takes title to the resulting IP rights, and then licenses the knowledge good to the government of another nation-state.
    [Show full text]
  • 1. Introduction Following Shapiro and Varian
    Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 2016, vol. 13(2), pp. 1-24 THE ECONOMICS OF DIGITAL GOODS: A PROGRESS REPORT PAUL BELLEFLAMME Abstract. I first review the theoretical apparatus that has been largely used so far to analyze in- formation goods industries. I argued then that although this apparatus was fairly appropriate in the analog era and in the early digital era, it now needs to be significantly updated. The advent of streaming challenges indeed the main assumptions that underlie the existing models. This observa- tion leads me to propose two main directions for future research eorts. First, one needs to better understand, and model, how streaming modifies the way content is accessed and consumed. Second, more attention should be given to the roles and strategies of streaming platforms, which become inescapable intermediaries regarding the distribution and consumption of digital goods. 1. Introduction Following Shapiro and Varian (1998), information can be broadly construed as anything that can be digitized, i.e., encoded as a series of ones and zeros. To be shared, information needs to be formatted in some way, so as to be transformed into an ‘information good’. When the chosen format is digital, the information good is called a ‘digital good’. To illustrate these definitions, think of the novel that is built in a writer’s mind as information; for readers to access this information, it must be written down in some form, which can be analog (a printed book) or digital (an e-book); the same goes for music, images, films, television programs, software, applications, games, etc.
    [Show full text]
  • Markets for Information Goods
    IMES DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES Markets for Information Goods Hal R. VARIAN Discussion Paper No. 99-E-9 INSTITUTE FOR MONETARY AND ECONOMIC STUDIES BANK OF JAPAN C.P.O BOX 203 TOKYO 100-8630 JAPAN NOTE: IMES Discussion Paper Series is circulated in order to stimulate discussion and comments. Views expressed in Discussion Paper Series are those of authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Japan or the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies. IMES Discussion Paper Series 99-E-9 May 1999 Markets for Information Goods Hal R. VARIAN* Abstract Economic theory has argued that "information" poses serious difficulties for the proper functioning of neoclassical markets. However, real markets seem to deal with it rather well, since real markets are much more creative than those simple competitive markets studied in Econ. 1. Information is an experience good, exhibits returns to scale, and public good properties, and all of these would seem to cause difficulties for market transactions. However, each of these issues can be dealt with: (1) there are practices such as previewing, browsing, and reviewing, which overcome the experience good problem; (2) product differentiation and/or price discrimination help deal with the returns to scale problem; and (3) intellectual property laws allow information goods to be excludable. Because information overload is becoming a serious problem, we will have to seek creative solutions such as recommender systems and/or intermediaries for filtering information. There will be an increased demand
    [Show full text]
  • The Continuum of Excludability and the Limits of Patents Abstract
    1900.KAPCZYNSKI&SYED.1963_UPDATED.DOCX5/18/2013 4:55:47 PM Amy Kapczynski & Talha Syed The Continuum of Excludability and the Limits of Patents abstract. In IP scholarship, patents are commonly understood as more efficient than other approaches to innovation policy. Their primary ostensible advantage is allocative: as a form of property rights, patents act as a conduit between market signals and potential innovators, ostensibly guiding investment toward inventions with the most social value. Existing accounts recognize that, in practice, signals of social value that patents facilitate may be attenuated because of, for example, transaction costs and limits on the scope and length of patent rights. We show here, however, a different problem with the conventional allocative account. The appropriability mechanism patents rely on, namely excludability, operates in asymmetrical ways for different kinds of information goods. While scholars have noted that patent systems fail to create goods whose value is difficult to appropriate in consumer markets, this fact has not been fully appreciated in the literature, nor have its implications for the standard justification for patents. Through detailed examples in the health context we show that some kinds of information goods will be much more difficult to exclude than others. Importantly, there is no reason to expect that the ease of exclusion will be correlated with social value. The analytic point that emerges is generalizable: patents themselves can have distortive effects, stemming from structural features of exclusion rights. Unlike the problem of attenuation, the problem of asymmetric nonexcludability cannot be resolved by increasing patent scope or length. Because excludability is variable along a continuum, property rights in information, even if formally perfected, and even assuming away conventional transaction costs, will create asymmetrical demand for different kinds of information goods.
    [Show full text]
  • The Economics of Ownership, Access and Trade in Digital Data
    JRC Digital Economy Working Paper 2017-01 The economics of ownership, access and trade in digital data Nestor Duch-Brown Bertin Martens Frank Mueller-Langer 2017 This publication is a Working Paper by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house science service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policy-making process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of this publication. Contact information European Commission, Joint Research Centre Address: Edificio Expo. c/Inca Garcilaso, 3. 41092 Seville (Spain) E-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +34 954488318 JRC Science Hub https://ec.europa.eu/jrc JRC104756 ISSN 1831-9408 (online) Seville, Spain: European Commission, 2017 © European Union, 2017 Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged. How to cite: Nestor Duch-Brown, Bertin Martens and Frank Mueller-Langer, The economics of ownership, access and trade in digital data; Digital Economy Working Paper 2017-01; JRC Technical Reports. All images © European Union 2017 Table of Contents 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4 2. Defining data and their economic properties ............................................. 6 2.1. What are data, information and communication? ....................................... 6 2.2. Economies of scope in data analytics ....................................................... 8 2.3. Interoperability and barriers to access ................................................... 10 3. The legal framework for data ownership and access ................................. 12 3.1. Legal ownership rights in data .............................................................. 12 3.2. Legal aspects of competition in data markets .......................................... 19 4. The economics of data ownership .........................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Wikipedia, Public Goods
    Public good In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others.[1] Gravelle and Rees: "The defining characteristic of a public good is that consumption of it by one individual does not actually or potentially reduce the amount available to be consumed by another individual." In a non-economic sense, the term is often used to describe something that is useful for the public generally, such as education and infrastructure, although these are not "public goods" in the economic sense. This is in contrast to acommon good which is non-excludable but is rivalrous to a certain degree. Public goods include fresh air, knowledge, official statistics, national security, common language(s), flood control systems, lighthouses, street lighting, and Wikipedia itself. Public goods that are available everywhere are sometimes referred to as global public goods.[2] There is an important conceptual difference between the sense of 'a' public good, or public 'goods' in economics, and the more generalized idea of 'the public good' (or common good, or public interest),[3][4]"‘the’ public good is a shorthand signal for shared benefit at a societal level [this] (philosophical/political) sense should not be reduced to the established specific (economic) sense of ‘a’ public good."[5] Many public goods may at times be subject to excessive use resulting in negative externalities affecting all users; for example air pollution and traffic congestion. Public goods problems are often closely related to the "free-rider" problem, in which people not paying for the good may continue to access it.
    [Show full text]
  • Using Information Resources to Enhance Urban Markets
    ______________________________________________________________________________ USING INFORMATION RESOURCES TO ENHANCE URBAN MARKETS Robert Weissbourd Riccardo Bodini RW Ventures, LLC A Discussion Paper Prepared for The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program March 2005 ______________________________________________________________________________ THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION METROPOLITAN POLICY PROGRAM SUMMARY OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS * DISCUSSION PAPERS/RESEARCH BRIEFS 2005 Market-Based Community Economic Development Using the U.S. and U.K. Censuses for Comparative Research Public Housing Reform and Voucher Success: Progress and Challenges Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development Strategy 2004 Toward a New Metropolis: An Opportunity to Rebuild America Banking the Poor The Other Side of the Ledger: Federal Health Spending in Metropolitan Economies Neighborhoods of Choice and Connection: The Evolution of American Neighborhood Policy and What It Means for the United Kingdom TDR’s and Other Market-Based Land Mechanisms: How They Work and Their Role in Shaping Metropolitan Growth The Calculus of Coalitions: Cities and States and the Metropolitan Agenda Investing in a Better Future: A Review of the Fiscal and Competitive Advantages of Smarter Growth Development Patterns TREND SURVEYS 2005 Job Sprawl and the Spatial Mismatch between Blacks and Jobs 2004 Losing Ground: Income and Poverty in Upstate New York, 1980-2000 Access to Social Services: The Changing Urban Geography of Poverty and Service Provision
    [Show full text]