Do you want to steal my songs? The importance of diffusion in the music industry

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K13726
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Economic policy
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Martin-Rodriguez Maria 名古屋大学, 経済学研究科(国際), 特任講師 (70795012)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: Piracy / Price Discrimination / Popularity / Welfare

Outline of Final Research Achievements

I build a model in which two artists that are heterogeneous in their degree of ex-ante popularity decide where to host their tracks, at a for-profit platform or at an open platform, to compare the outcomes with copyright and piracy:
1) Piracy equalizes the bargaining power of the famous and the unknown artists. 2) High-quality markets can appear because of piracy. 3) Piracy does not necessarily imply a price decrease. 4) Total welfare may decrease with piracy, but only if the unknown artist hosts her tracks at the for-profit platform with copyright. In this case, diffusion gains and inclusion of new customers due to piracy increase the total welfare, but the switching effect driven by the consumers who exchange high-quality copies by low-quality ones decreases the total welfare.

Free Research Field

産業組織

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

この研究プロジェクトは、どのエージェントが恩恵を受け、どのエージェントが違法コピーの存在下で悪化するかを決定する条件についての理解を深めることを目的としています。 我々の結果は、全員の福祉を同時に改善することは不可能であると述べている。 したがって、政策決定者は、保護したいグループに応じて適切な規制を設計する必要があります。