Musicians and the Mona Lisa effect

The availability of music as digital files has made recorded songs a commodity.  Reproduction costs are low and there is a huge and ever expanding choice of artists and titles to choose from.  Market economics say that prices should fall - and consumers clearly expect that to be the case.  It's not unsurprising then to hear that revenues from selling music are falling...

As a consumer I see it as what I call the Mona Lisa effect.  Leonardo's masterpiece has world renown - everyone knows what it looks like.  The original is worth a fortune - (more probably several fortunes) - but a printed copy in a newspaper, or a jpeg image on the web, is practically worthless.  Seeing the copy in the consumer's mind is not the same as seeing the original. 

And that's the way it's going in the music industry.  Listening to the record is not the same as seeing the original.  Musicians are artists - performance artists - and it is in performance that the public value what the artist does.  With that in mind it is interesting to read the figures on the Times Labs Blog showing that artists revenues are increasing thanks to live performances - while record label incomes are falling.  They have a telling graph that highlights this well - also copied and with comment on Boing Boing, and Christian Engström's blog.  The raw data is available here.

Artists income from recordings has fallen 27% over four years - but during the same period artist's income from live performance has gone up 70%, giving artists a net gain of 45% over four years.  Not many industries can point to the same good news in the midst of a recession.......

As the Mona Lisa shows - the value lies in the original...   remember that next time you see that enigmatic smile  ;-)


Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.