Abstract
Digitization and the Internet have affected the arts, heritage organizations and cultural industries along with other information services. Digital information and communication technologies (ICT) have altered the consumption of and participation in a range of creative goods and services, including the live performing arts, recorded music, film and cultural heritage. This chapter looks at some of the changes that have recently come about due to digitization and at the analysis of them by economists, and invokes key concepts in cultural economics to understand the meaning of these trends.
This chapter is an updated and adapted version of a working-paper first published in 2013 by the same authors. A related version was also published in the Handbook on the Economics of the Internet in 2016.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Choi (2012) for a detailed treatment of bundling.
- 3.
See Gabszewicz et al. (2015) for a recent survey.
- 4.
Cultural products tend to be non-rival in consumption—the consumption by one party does not diminish the value of the same work by others. If there are no problems with excessive use (congestion), network effects will usually be positive. There may be exceptions where cultural products are Veblen goods that are appreciated for their scarcity and the potential to demonstrate social status through conspicuous consumption (Towse 1997).
- 5.
Pay TV subscriptions for selected—often exclusive—audiovisual content have been marketed for a long time.
- 6.
See Google and PRS (2012) for an overview of business models for illegal online provision.
- 7.
See Sherman and Waterman (2016) on the economics of online video entertainment.
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Handke, C., Stepan, P., Towse, R. (2017). Cultural Economics, the Internet and Participation. In: Ateca-Amestoy, V., Ginsburgh, V., Mazza, I., O'Hagan, J., Prieto-Rodriguez, J. (eds) Enhancing Participation in the Arts in the EU. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09096-2_20
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