Rockonomic

Do Freemium music services offer greater revenue per user than the freemium combo of Radio and Sales?

The purpose of this story is rather simple:

First, let’s treat the music industry like a “freemium” music service with both paid…

Flood Stage Economics: The subtle and often unspoken dangers in the displacement debate

Recent work by Dr. Aguiar and Dr. Waldfogel has made its way from a working paper to a technical report released by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, one of the…

Popularity versus Demand: Looking further into the fair distribution of streaming wealth

This post will be the last in a series of three conversations on the ways in which artist popularity, listener demand, and time spent listening impact any redistribution of wealth…

Everything you need to know about why the Apple Brand may not be enough to move the needle for the Music Industry

Tomorrow, “it” happens. Apple’s long-awaited and much-hyped music service, Apple Music, will launch.

$0.0000955: The value of a Spin, per Listener, to Songwriters on US Radio in 2014

Now that ASCAP and BMI have revealed their revenues for 2014, and we have some data on SESAC (thanks to Moody’s), we can estimate the value of a Spin, per listener, to Songwriters from…

Redistributing the streaming wealth: Understanding the links between popularity, demand, and time

The purpose of this post (which will be released as a Grey Paper) is to further inform the ongoing discussion over how best to distribute the royalties from…

Redistributing the streaming wealth: Why listening hours not artist popularity may drive the divvying up of the royalty pot

The question of just how to distribute the royalty dollars from music services has moved from a back-office thought…

0.02%: the possible Sales-to-Spins conversion rate of US Radio

It has often been said, I don’t know by whom, that the power of Radio is it’s ability to sell music. The purpose of this post is to surface any possible evidence of, if not simply a measure of, this claim.

Earth to the US Music Industry: 99.9% of your revenues now come from Digital sources

Let’s just be honest. If there were any industry that prefers to deny reality it is the music industry.