Digital Renaissance: What Data and Economics Tell Us about the Future of Popular Culture

321 Pages·2018·3.74 MB·english

by  Joel Waldfogel

DIGITAL RE NAIS SANCE

Digital Re nais sance
What Data and
Economics Tell Us
about the F uture of
Popu lar Culture
Joel Waldfogel
PRINCE TON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCE TON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2018 by Prince ton University Press
Published by Prince ton University Press
41 William Street, Prince ton, New Jersey 08540
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press . princeton . edu
All Rights Reserved
LCCN 2018936672
ISBN 978-0-691-16282-9
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
Editorial: Joe Jackson and Samantha Nader
Production Editorial: Debbie Tegarden
Jacket design: Michel Vrana
Jacket art: courtesy of iStock
Production: Jacquie Poirier
Publicity: James Schneider
This book has been composed in Din Pro and Adobe Text Pro
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to my parents,
Melvin and Gertrude Waldfogel.
While nobody knows anything,
I think they might have liked it.

CONTENTS
Acknowl edgments ix
1 The Creative Industries: Risky, Expensive, and Worth
Preserving 1
PART I: A TOUR OF SOME MAJOR CULTURAL INDUSTRIES:
MUSIC, MOVIES, TELE VI SION SHOWS, BOOKS, AND
PHOTOGRAPHY 29
2 Digitization in Music: Rock On? 31
3 Digitization in Movies: Hollywood Ending? 73
4 Digitization in Tele vi sion: Has the Vast
Wasteland Blossomed? 106
5 Digitization in Books: Fifty Shades of Dreck? 121
6 Digitization Further Afield: Photography, Travel Agents,
and Beyond 151
7 The Value of the Digital Re nais sance: The Long Tail
and a Whole Lot More 163
PART II: COMING ATTRACTIONS: FARM TEAMS, BUNDLING,
PIRATES, VIKINGS, AND TROLLS 175
8 The Digital Farm System, and the Promise of Bundling 177
9 A Tale of Two Intellectual Property Regimes: Lessons
from Hollywood and Bollywood 208
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viii CONTENTS
10 Digitization, the French, and the Return of the Vikings 219
11 Bridge Trolls: The Pos si ble Threat of Technological
Gatekeepers 246
12 Crisis or Re nais sance? 252
Notes 259
References 275
Index 297
ACKNOWL EDGMENTS
This book is the product of a dozen years of work with vari ous col-
laborators, including Luis Aguiar, Mary Benner, Fernando Ferreira,
Imke Reimers, Ben Shiller, and Rahul Telang. I am grateful to them
for sharing vari ous journeys of exploration with me.
The National Bureau of Economic Research’s Digitization Pro-
gram, and particularly Shane Greenstein, have provided me with
invaluable support by convening a community of scholars interested
in the topic of this book. I’ve learned much from the lively feedback
of that community.
I am grateful to the Institute for Prospective Technological
Studies of the Eu ro pean Commission, and in par tic u lar to Bertin
Martens, for bringing me into a conversation about copyright in
Eu rope, sponsoring numerous research trips to Seville, and grant-
ing me access to data.
I thank my siblings, whose experiences with digitization have
taught me a g reat deal, both directly and through osmosis. My
brother Asher was an early developer of Internet communications
technology, and my s ister Sabra used self- publishing to launch a
successful c areer as a novelist.
I have benefited greatly from the input of Steven Rigolosi, who
has served as a sounding board and editor.
Fi nally, I am grateful to my immediate f amily, for both general
support and for comments on early drafts of the book. My wife,
Mary Benner, is both a supportive spouse and one of the research
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