Selling digital music: business models for public goods
Publikation: Working paper
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Selling digital music : business models for public goods. / Hougaard, Jens Leth; Tvede, Mich.
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, 2009.Publikation: Working paper
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TY - UNPB
T1 - Selling digital music
T2 - business models for public goods
AU - Hougaard, Jens Leth
AU - Tvede, Mich
N1 - JEL classification: D2, D4
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - This paper considers the market for digital music. We claim that the combination of the MP3 format and peer-to-peer networks has made music non-excludable and this feature is essential for the understanding of the economics of the music market. We study optimal business models for selling non-excludable goods and show that despite promising theoretical results, adding just a slight uncertainty about the number of customers has significant negative implications for profitability. Indeed, as the average number of customers tends to infinity the average payment per customer converges to zero. Therefore, the music industry should concentrate on alternative ways of creating profit such as selling access to listeners, concerts, merchandise, ringtones etc.
AB - This paper considers the market for digital music. We claim that the combination of the MP3 format and peer-to-peer networks has made music non-excludable and this feature is essential for the understanding of the economics of the music market. We study optimal business models for selling non-excludable goods and show that despite promising theoretical results, adding just a slight uncertainty about the number of customers has significant negative implications for profitability. Indeed, as the average number of customers tends to infinity the average payment per customer converges to zero. Therefore, the music industry should concentrate on alternative ways of creating profit such as selling access to listeners, concerts, merchandise, ringtones etc.
KW - Former LIFE faculty
M3 - Working paper
BT - Selling digital music
PB - Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen
ER -
ID: 14490979