Superstars and the Long Tail: The impact of technology on market structure in media industries

Helen Weeds

No 8719, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Technological change is transforming creative media industries. Digitisation lowers recording, storage, reproduction and distribution costs, while computer-based editing facilitates higher quality and special effects. With electronic distribution a vast range of content can be made available to consumers across global markets. The distribution of industry sales appears to be shifting: the late 20th century was the era of the 'hit parade' but attention has now shifted to the 'long tail'. This paper develops a model of differentiated products with endogenous quality and heterogeneous firms to examine the implications of technological change for product variety, quality, and the distribution of firms in media industries.

Keywords: Digital media; Creative industries; Superstars; Long tail (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L11 L15 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cul and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8719 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Superstars and the long tail: The impact of technology on market structure in media industries (2012)
Working Paper: Superstars and the Long Tail: The impact of technology on market structure in media industries (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8719

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8719

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().