21. IFPI, “Global Music Report 2018: Annual State of the Industry,” 2018.
22. Jason Huang, David H. Reiley, and Nickolai M. Riabov, “Measuring Consumer Sensitivity to Audio Advertising: A Field Experiment on Pandora Internet Radio,” working paper, 2018, https://davidreiley.com/papers/PandoraListenerDemandCurve.pdf.
23. See Alan B. Krueger, Daniel Kahneman, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz, and Arthur A. Stone, “National Time Accounting: The Currency of Life,” in Measuring the Subjective Well-Being of Nations: National Accounts of Time Use and Well-Being, ed. Alan B. Krueger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
24. From presentations by Dave Bakula, Nielsen, and Russ Crupnick at the 2017 MIRA Conference at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. See https://themira.org/program-1.
25. Author’s calculations using data from Statista (https://www.statista.com/outlook/40110200/109/potato-chips/united-states) and IFPI, “Global Music Report 2018.”
26. Maria L. Bringas et al., “Effectiveness of Music Therapy as an Aid to Neurorestoration of Children with Severe Neurological Disorders,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 9 (2015): 427.
Chapter 2: FOLLOW THE MONEY
1. Simon was originally quoted in Jon Landau, “Paul Simon: The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone, Jul. 20, 1972.
2. The statistics in this paragraph on the size of the music industry and in the next section are derived from Statista, “Music Dossier,” 2017 (https://www.statista.com/study/10499/music-industry-in-the-united-states-statista-dossier), 10, 11, and 17, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
3. Mikal Gilmore, “The Rolling Stone 20th Anniversary Interview: Bruce Springsteen,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 5, 1987.
4. Spotify’s chief economist, Will Page, has argued with some justification that measures of recording industry revenue undercount copyright payments. But even taking such undercounting into account, global music spending is still well below 0.1 percent of worldwide GDP. See Tim Ingham, “The Global Music Copyright Business Is Worth More Than You Think—and Grew by Nearly $1bn Last Year,” Music Business Worldwide, Dec. 13, 2016.
5. Quoted from an interview with Russ Crupnick on May 17, 2017, in Nashville, TN.
6. See Darren Heitner, “Sports Industry to Reach $73.5 Billion by 2019,” Forbes, Oct. 19, 2015.
7. Daniel Kaplan, “NFL Revenue Reaches $14B, Fueled by Media,” Sports Business Journal, Mar. 6, 2017, and author’s calculation using data from the U.S. Department of Education (https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#).
8. See Jennifer Maloney and Saabira Chaudhuri, “Against All Odds, the U.S. Tobacco Industry Is Rolling in Money,” Wall Street Journal, Apr. 23, 2017. Advertising expenditures were $8.9 billion in 2015, according to the CDC; see “Smoking & Tobacco Use: Fast Facts,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm.
9. See IHRSA, “U.S. Fitness Center/Health Club Industry Revenue from 2000 to 2016 (in Billion U.S. Dollars),” Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/236120/us-fitness-center-revenue, and Ana Swanson, “What Your Gym Doesn’t Want You to Know,” Washington Post, Jan. 5, 2016.
10. These and other quotes in this chapter are from a telephone interview with Cliff Burnstein on Jul. 5, 2017.
11. Alan B. Krueger and Ying Zhen, “Inaugural Music Industry Research Association (MIRA) Survey of Musicians,” MIRA Conference Report 2018.
12. Quote from meeting with Avery Lipman, New York, NY, Nov. 10, 2017.
13. “Vinyl (Still) Rocks m/,” RIAA Music Note Blog, Mar. 23, 2016; Elizabeth King, “Why Are CDs Still a Thing?,” Motherboard, Apr. 8, 2016.
14. Allison Stewart, “What Genres Have Benefited Most from the Streaming Era of Music,” Chicago Tribune, Apr. 4, 2018.
15. Hugh McIntyre, “What Do the Major Streaming Services Pay per Stream,” Forbes, Jul. 27, 2017.
16. Jem Aswad and Janko Roettgers, “With 70 Million Subscribers and a Risky IPO Strategy, Is Spotify Too Big to Fail?,” Variety, Jan. 24, 2018.
17. Donald S. Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business (New York: Free Press, 2012).
18. AudienceNet, “2017 Music Consumption: The Overall Landscape.” These data are based on a nationally representative online survey of 3,006 U.S. residents age sixteen and older.
19. Goldman Sachs Equity Research, “Music in the Air,” Aug. 28, 2017, 25.
20. “A Billion Reasons to Celebrate Music on YouTube,” YouTube Official Blog, Dec. 6, 2016; Rob LeFebvre, “YouTube Music Head Says Company Pays Higher Royalties Than Spotify in US,” Engadget, Aug. 7, 2017.
21. These statistics are from “David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music,” Wired, Dec. 18, 2007.
22. “BuzzAngle Music 2017 U.S. Report,” BuzzAngle, 2017.
23. This information is drawn from Amanda Palmer’s Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/amandapalmer.
24. Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business.
25. The statistics in this subsection are drawn from Billboard’s top moneymakers in 2016 and 2017 and author’s calculations using these data. See Ed Christman, “Billboard’s 2018 Money Makers: 50 Highest-Paid Musicians,” Billboard, Jul. 20, 2018.
26. Gary Trust and Keith Caulfield, “Eminem Marks Sales, Hot 100 Milestones,” Billboard, Mar. 21, 2014.
27. Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams,” Rumors, Warner Bros., 1977.
28. Dan Kopf, “Amid Controversy, the NFL Is Still Thriving Financially,” Quartz, Sep. 9, 2018.
29. Presentation by David Bakula, VP of Global Product Leadership and Industry Insights for Music at Nielsen, at the 2017 MIRA Conference at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA (https://themira.org/program-1); AudienceNet, “2018 Music Consumption: The Overall Landscape,” 2018.
30. AudienceNet, “2017 Music Consumption: The Overall Landscape.”
31. “Time with Tunes: How Technology Is Driving Music Consumption,” Nielsen Insights, Nov. 2, 2017.
32. Robert B. Zajonc, “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9, no. 2, pt. 2 (1968): 1–27.
33. See Erik Kirschbaum, Rocking the Wall: Bruce Springsteen; The Berlin Concert That Changed the World (New York: Berlinica, 2015).
34. Eric Alper (@ThatEricAlper), “What album or song or musician has changed your life?,” Twitter, Dec. 26, 2017, 10:30 a.m., https://twitter.com/ThatEricAlper/status/945723501746454528.
35. See Ben Cosgrove, “Concert for Bangladesh: Photos from the First-Ever Rock ’n’ Roll Benefit Show,” Time, Jul. 30, 2013.
36. See Amy Robinson, “Michael Jackson ‘We Are the World,’ ” The Borgen Project, Jan. 27, 2014, https://borgenproject.org/michael-jackson-world.
37. See Catherine McHugh, “Live Aid 30th Anniversary: The Day Rock and Roll Changed the World,” Biography.com, Jul. 12, 2015.
38. Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
39. Larry Fink, BlackRock, “A Sense of Purpose,” annual letter to CEOs, 2017.
40. Author’s calculation using BuzzAngle Total Streaming data.
41. Michael Agresta, “The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor,” Atlantic, Oct. 3, 2012.
42. Brian Hiatt, “Natalie Maines: A Dixie Chick Declares War on Nashville,” Rolling Stone, May 20, 2013.
43. Trigger (Kyle Coroneos), “Destroying the Dixie Chicks—Ten Years After,” Saving Country Music (blog), Mar. 10, 2013.
44. Gayle Thompson, “15 Years Ago: Natalie Maines Makes Controversial Comments About President George W. Bush,” The Boot, Mar. 10, 2018, http://theboot.com/natalie-maines-dixie-chicks-controversy.
45. “North American Concerts Gross $61M for Dixie Chicks,” Austin Business Journal, Aug.
18, 2003.
46. “Banging the Drum for Music,” BBC Arts, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5lgpCss83SfgN1FJks8gJkB/banging-the-drum-for-music. Accessed Oct. 16, 2018.
Chapter 3: THE SUPPLY OF MUSICIANS
1. Andy Greene, “Max Weinberg Talks 43 Years with Bruce Springsteen, Health Scares,” Rolling Stone, Mar. 7, 2017.
2. Bruce Springsteen, “Ain’t Got You,” Tunnel of Love, Columbia Records, 1987.
3. The figures in this section are based on my tabulations of the American Community Survey (ACS) for the years 2000–2016 and the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses. Salaries are for the preceding twelve months. Workers’ occupations are classified based on their current or most recent job duties. The count of workers is based on those who worked for pay in the previous week. The 2016 ACS sample consisted of interviews conducted with 2.2 million households. Sample weights were used to attempt to make the weighted responses representative of the U.S. population.
4. Randall Filer in “The ‘Starving Artist’—Myth or Reality? Earnings of Artists in the United States,” Journal of Political Economy 94, no. 1 (1986): 56–75, finds that in 1980 artists as a whole, including musicians, earned less money, on average, than other workers primarily because they were younger. He concludes that the starving artist is a myth. The myth, however, is more of a reality in the 2000s, as musicians grew older and better educated than the rest of the workforce, yet continued to earn considerably less than other workers, on average.
5. Statistics in this paragraph are based on Alan B. Krueger and Ying Zhen, “Inaugural Music Industry Research Association (MIRA) Survey of Musicians,” MIRA Conference Report 2018.
6. Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger, “Understanding Trends in Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States,” NBER Working Paper No. 25425, 2019.
7. Andrea Domanick, “The Dollars and Desperation Silencing #MeToo in Music,” Noisey.com, Mar. 15, 2018.
8. “Artists and Health Insurance Survey,” Future of Music, Oct. 15, 2013.
9. Krueger and Zhen, “Inaugural Music Industry Research Association (MIRA) Survey of Musicians.”
10. “Freelancing in America: 2017,” Freelancers Union & Upwork, 2017.
11. Focus group with New Jersey musicians on Feb. 21, 2018.
12. See Alan B. Krueger, “The Impact of Non-Traditional Jobs and the Role of Public Policy,” Moynihan Lecture, 2017, http://www.aapss.org/news/alan-krueger-delivers-2017-moynihan-lecture.
13. Eric Alper, “Billy Joel on His Advice to Younger Musicians,” That Eric Alper (blog), Jan. 14, 2018.
14. Dan Wilson (@DanWilsonMusic), “Even to be a moderately successful musician…,” Twitter, May 10, 2018, 8:48 a.m., https://twitter.com/DanWilsonMusic/status/994604978625900550.
15. Kurt Cobain, Kurt Cobain Journals (London: Viking Books, 2002).
16. Shawn Rending, “Music Legend Nile Rodgers to SXSW Crowd: ‘Don’t Be a Snob,’ ” KVUE, Mar. 15, 2017.
17. Patti Smith, Just Kids (New York: Ecco, 2010).
18. Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One (New York: Pocket Books, 2005).
19. lEIGh5, “Jason Pierce (Spiritualized) Interview: 2011,” Digging a Hole (blog), May 11, 2011, http://guestlisted.blogspot.com/2011/05/jason-pierce-spiritualized-interview.html.
20. Interview with Jacob Collier on Feb. 16, 2018, in Miami Beach.
21. Krueger and Zhen, “Inaugural Music Industry Research Association (MIRA) Survey of Musicians.”
22. Discussion with Bob Geldof on Nov. 17, 2017, at the Hamilton Project Retreat in New York City.
23. These data come from author’s calculations of data on CEO compensation of publicly traded companies, athletes, and musician earnings. See “Equilar | New York Times 200 Highest-Paid CEOs,” Equilar, May 25, 2018; “The World’s Highest-Paid Athletes,” Forbes, June 13, 2018; and Ed Christman, “Billboard’s 2018 Money Makers: 50 Highest-Paid Musicians,” Billboard, Jul. 20, 2018.
24. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776).
25. Grateful Dead, “Playing in the Band,” Ace, Warner Bros., 1972.
26. Frank Sinatra, Sinatra at the Sands, Reprise Records, 1966.
27. Author’s calculations using data from Billboard Top 100 Songs.
28. Skype interview with Dan Wilson on Jun. 29, 2018.
29. Gary Trust, “Happy Birthday, Billboard Charts! On July 27, 1940, the First Song Sales Chart Debuted,” Billboard, Jul. 27, 2017.
30. Robert Daniels, “The Hip Hop Economy Goes Free Trade,” Fortune, Apr. 25, 2012.
31. Jacob Slichter, So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life (New York: Broadway Books, 2004).
32. Telephone interview with Cliff Burnstein, Jul. 5, 2017.
33. James Brown and Bruce Tucker, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (London: Head of Zeus, 1987).
34. Dan Epstein, “Metallica’s Black Album: 10 Things You Didn’t Know,” Rolling Stone, Aug. 12, 2016.
35. Fred Bronson, “Metallica, Afghanistan National Institute of Music Named 2018 Polar Music Prize Laureates,” Billboard, Feb. 14, 2018.
36. Interview with Quincy Jones on Aug. 11, 2017, in Los Angeles, CA, and Quincy Jones remarks at Inside ETF conference, Hollywood, FL, Jan. 23, 2017.
37. Interview with Adam Fell on Aug. 11, 2017, in Los Angeles, CA.
38. Quoted from an interview with Steve Ferrone on Mar. 14, 2018, in Los Angeles, CA.
39. Statistics in this section are based on the 2018 MIRA musician survey, 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and 2015–16 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). See Krueger and Zhen, “Inaugural Music Industry Research Association (MIRA) Survey of Musicians.”
40. See Martin Wolkewitz, Arthur Allignol, Nicholas Graves, and Adrian G. Barnett, “Is 27 Really a Dangerous Age for Famous Musicians? Retrospective Cohort Study,” BMJ 343, no. 7837 (2011); Mark A. Bellis, Tom Hennell, Clare Lushey, Karen Hughes, Karen Tocque, and John R. Ashton, “Elvis to Eminem: Quantifying the Price of Fame Through Early Mortality of European and North American Rock and Pop Stars,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 61, no. 1 (2007): 896–901.
41. Socioeconomic indicators and geography of musicians were compiled using a variety of sources, including interviews, articles, biographies, etc. Socioeconomic status was determined using several factors, including family structure, housing type (i.e., public housing), and parental occupation. Parental occupations were classified into income categories using data from the 2010 American Community Survey.
42. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 4 (2014): 1553–623.
43. “Melanie C Talks Spice Girls and Sexism at AIM’s Women in Music,” Music Week, Jan. 18, 2018.
44. Krueger and Zhen, “Inaugural Music Industry Research Association (MIRA) Survey of Musicians.”
45. Trigger (Kyle Coroneos), “In 2017, Women Only Made Up 7.5% of Country Radio’s Top 40,” Saving Country Music (blog), Dec. 27, 2017.
46. Judy Klemesrud, “Is Women’s Lib Coming to the Philharmonic?,” New York Times, Apr. 11, 1971.
47. Melinda Newman, “Where Are All the Female Music Producers,” Billboard, Jan. 19, 2018.
48. Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on Female Musicians,” American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000): 715–41.
49. Katharine Zaleski, “Job Interviews Without Gender,” New York Times, Jan. 6, 2018.
50. Patrick Doyle, “The Last Word: Billy Joel on Self-Doub
t, Trump and Finally Becoming Cool,” Rolling Stone, Jun. 14, 2017.
Chapter 4: THE ECONOMICS OF SUPERSTARS
1. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective,” American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (2006): 200–205.
2. Lucas Chancel Facundo, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, “2018 World Inequality Report,” World Inequality Lab, 2018.
3. This and other quotes are from Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1930).
4. This and other quotes are from Sherwin Rosen, “The Economics of Superstars,” American Economic Review 71, no. 5 (1981): 845–58.
5. William Barclay Squire, “Billington, Elizabeth,” in Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen (London: Smith, Elder, 1886).
6. This is based on the Bank of England’s inflation calculator and a pound-dollar exchange rate of 1.40. See Zack O’Malley Greenburg, “The World’s Highest-Paid Women in Music 2017,” Forbes, Nov. 20, 2017.
7. Author’s calculation using information from the Pollstar Boxoffice Database.
8. Author’s calculation using BuzzAngle data. Estimates are based on the assumption that there are three million artists currently on streaming platforms. Artists are ranked by number of albums sold in 2017.
9. Jon Pareles, “David Bowie: 21st Century Entrepreneur,” New York Times, Jun. 9, 2002.
10. Quoted from a telephone interview with Cliff Burnstein on Jul. 5, 2017.
11. Donald S. Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business (New York: Free Press, 2012).
12. Lucy Williamson, “The Dark Side of South Korean Pop Music,” BBC News, Jun. 15, 2011.
13. “BuzzAngle Music 2017 U.S. Report,” BuzzAngle, 2018.
14. I made this calculation assuming an eighty-year life span, sixteen hours of listening time a day, and five minutes per song.
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