These findings are consistent with those of the Oberholzer-Gee / Strumpf report presented at the 2010 Vienna Music Research days and published in the NBER Series. They add some very interesting information on the number of artists (30% growth) and their specific average income (60% average income growth). The latter may not necessarily be valid everywhere (in particular because Norway has seen an important growth in grants and subsidies which is not witnessed on other countries). Unfortunately, there is little information on the distribution of this income among artists. In all countries, live performance is the fastest growing source of income, but in many countries, it is extremely concentrated on some leading tours and connected to a strong increase in the price of tickets. Best, Philippe J.C. DE MARTIN a écrit :

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [p2p-research] Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:43:58 +0700 From: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004@gmail.com> Reply-To: p2p research network <p2presearch@listcultures.org> To: Peer-To-Peer Research List <p2presearch@listcultures.org> CC: fcforum@list.fcforum.net

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

Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It

Written 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.