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55 Ariz. L. Rev. 301 (2013)
Money from Music: Survey Evidence on Musicians' Revenue and Lessons about Copyright Incentives

handle is hein.journals/arz55 and id is 319 raw text is: MONEY FROM MUSIC:
SURVEY EVIDENCE ON MUSICIANS' REVENUE
AND LESSONS ABOUT COPYRIGHT
INCENTIVES
Peter DiCola*
According to the incentive theory of copyright, financial rewards are what the
public trades for the production of creative works. To know whether this quid pro
quo is working, one needs to know how much the creators are getting from the
bargain. Based on an original, nationwide survey of more than 5,000 musicians,
this Article addresses one of the key links in the incentive theory's chain of logic.
For most musicians, copyright does not provide much of a direct financial reward
for what they are producing currently. The survey findings are instead consistent
with a winner-take-all or superstar model in which copyright motivates musicians
through the promise of large rewards in the future in the rare event of wide
popularity.
*     Associate Professor, Northwestern University School of Law. A.B. 1998,
Princeton University; J.D. 2005, Ph.D. (Economics) 2009, University of Michigan. I am
grateful to my colleagues Jean Cook and Kristin Thomson of the Future of Music Coalition.
We worked together to develop and analyze the Internet survey of musicians discussed in
this Article, and I have benefited greatly from our discussions as a research team. The views
expressed in this Article are my own, however, and not those of Jean, Kristin, or Future of
Music Coalition. My thanks to Ken Ayotte, Scott Baker, Shari Diamond, Zev Eigen, Josh
Fischman, Ezra Friedman, William Hubbard, Jessica Litman, Anup Malani, Mark
McKenna, Tom Miles, Max Schanzenbach, and Avishalom Tor for helpful comments and
advice. I also thank workshop participants at Northwestern University, the University of
Michigan, the University of Notre Dame, and the NBER Economics of Digitization
conference. All errors are my own responsibility. Research grants for the Artist Revenue
Streams Project came from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, with additional support
from YouTube and the East Bay Community Foundation; my great thanks to all the project
sponsors and to everyone at Future of Music Coalition.

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