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 vii 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 ix