[p2p-research] Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It

[Michel Bauwens]

very significative for us:
http://torrentfreak.com/artists-make-more-money-in-file-sharing-age-than-before-100914/


 Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before ItWritten by
Ernesto <http://torrentfreak.com/author/ernesto/> on September 14, 2010

An extensive study into the effect of digitalization on the music industry
in Norway has shed an interesting light on the position of artists today,
compared to 1999. While the music industry often talks about artists being
on the brink of bankruptcy due to illicit file-sharing, the study found that
the number of artists as well as their average income has seen a major
increase in the last decade.

Every other month a new study addressing the link between music piracy and
music revenues surfaces, but only a few really stand out. One of the most
elaborate and complete studies conducted in recent times is the master
thesis <http://www.scribd.com/doc/37406039/Thesis-Bjerkoe-Sorbo> of
Norwegian School of Management students Anders Sørbo and Richard Bjerkøe.

In their thesis, the students take a detailed look at the different revenue
streams of the music industry between 1999 and 2009. By doing so, they aim
to answer the question of how the digitization of music – and the most
common side-effect, piracy – have changed the economic position of the
Norwegian music industry and Norwegian artists. The results are striking.

After crunching the music industry’s numbers the researchers found that
total industry revenue grew from 1.4 billion Norwegian kronor in 1999 to 1.9
billion in 2009. After adjusting this figure for inflation this comes down
to a 4% increase in revenues for the music industry in this time period.
Admittedly, this is not much of a growth, but things get more interesting
when the research zooms in on artist revenue.



In the same period when the overall revenues of the industry grew by only
4%, the revenue for artists alone more than doubled with an increase of
114%. After an inflation adjustment, artist revenue went up from 255 million
in 1999 to 545 million kronor in 2009.

Some of the growth can be attributed to the fact that the number of artists
increased by 28% in the same time period. However, per artist the yearly
income still saw a 66% increase from 80,000 to 133,000 kronor between 1999
and 2009. In conclusion, one could say that artists are far better off now
than they were before the digitization of music started.



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