An artist life cycle model for digital media content: Strategies for the Light Web and the Dark Web

This paper surveys and categorizes emerging digital media business models. We apply the customer activity cycle of Vandermerwe (2000) to the consumption of digital media, taking three phases into account: pre-consumption, consumption and post-consumption. Our analysis of the business models focuses on their social costs and benefits. We derive the parameters as follows: convenience of use, exposure, ease of compliance and administration. We distinguish two polar environments for digital media: the Dark Web with content created by the masses, and the Light Web with content created by big media. We develop an artist life cycle model in which different business models appear to be optimal at different stages of an artist's career. Voluntary payment-based models seem to be ideal for newcomers in the Dark Web, while digital rights management-based and complementary product and service-basedmodels are the likely choice of established artists in the Light Web. Established artists might change their approach again, using voluntary payment-based or complementary product and service-based models when they retire.

[1]  W. Buhse The role of digital rights management as a solution for market uncertainties for mobile music , 2002 .

[2]  William W. Fisher Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment , 2007 .

[3]  Karl Reiner Lang,et al.  Transmutability: Digital Decontextualization, Manipulation, and Recontextualization as a New Source of Value in the Production and Consumption of Culture Products , 2006, Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06).

[4]  Eric K. Clemons,et al.  A Unified Interdisciplinary Theory of Open Source Culture and Entertainment , 2007 .

[5]  A. Krueger The Economics of Real Superstars: The Market for Rock Concerts in the Material World , 2005, Journal of Labor Economics.

[6]  Dale A. Stirling,et al.  Information rules , 2003, SGMD.

[7]  Natali Helberger,et al.  Digital Rights Management and Consumer Acceptability: A Multi-Disciplinary Discussion of Consumer Concerns and Expectations , 2004 .

[8]  Robert J. Kauffman,et al.  The Move to Artist-Led On-Line Music Distribution: A Theory-Based Assessment and Prospects for Structural Changes in the Digital Music Market , 2006, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[9]  Valerie L. Vaccaro,et al.  The Evolution of Business Models and Marketing Strategies in the Music Industry , 2004 .

[10]  Harry Bouwman,et al.  Balancing Requirements For Customer Value Of Mobile Services , 2004, Bled eConference.

[11]  Colin Camerer Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction , 2003 .

[12]  Lisa N. Takeyama The Shareware Industry: Some Stylized Facts And Estimates Of Rates Of Return , 1994 .

[13]  Tobias Regner,et al.  Efficient Contracts for Digital Content , 2004 .

[14]  Stan J. Liebowitz,et al.  Will Mp3 Downloads Annihilate the Record Industry? The Evidence so Far , 2003 .

[15]  Javier A. Barria,et al.  Do consumers pay voluntarily? The case of online music☆ , 2009 .

[16]  Andrew Odlyzko,et al.  The delusions of net neutrality , 2008 .

[17]  S. Liebowitz Copying and Indirect Appropriability: Photocopying of Journals , 1985, Journal of Political Economy.

[18]  Hal R. Varian,et al.  The Social Cost of Sharing , 2003 .

[19]  Francesco Silva,et al.  Sound Recording Market: The Ambiguous Case of Copyright and Piracy , 2000 .

[20]  M. Fetscherin Present state and emerging scenarios of digital rights management systems , 2002 .

[21]  G. L. Sanders,et al.  Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing? , 2004 .

[22]  Hal R. Varian Intermediate Microeconomic A Modern Approach , 1999 .

[23]  E. Fehr,et al.  Reciprocity as a contract enforcement device: experimental evidence , 1997 .

[24]  Bruce Schneier,et al.  The Street Performer Protocol and Digital Copyrights , 1999, First Monday.

[25]  Peter Eckersley Economic Evaluation , 2019, Chemical Process Design and Simulation.

[26]  Kathleen Fischer Promises to Keep , 1992 .

[27]  Jun Li Electronic Commerce: Strategies and Models for Business‐to‐Business Trading , 2003 .

[28]  Per E. Pedersen,et al.  Intentions to use mobile services: Antecedents and cross-service comparisons , 2005 .

[29]  Erik Brynjolfsson,et al.  Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety at Online Booksellers , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[30]  J. Pitt,et al.  Cross media digital rights management for online stores , 2005, First International Conference on Automated Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-Channel Distribution (AXMEDIS'05).

[31]  Felix Oberholzer-Gee,et al.  The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis , 2007, Journal of Political Economy.

[32]  Tim O'Reilly,et al.  What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software , 2007 .

[33]  J. Avery,et al.  The long tail. , 1995, Journal of the Tennessee Medical Association.

[34]  Oz Shy,et al.  Publishers, artists, and copyright enforcement , 2006, Inf. Econ. Policy.

[35]  Adamantia G. Pateli,et al.  Drawing Emerging Business Models for the Mobile Music Industry , 2006, Electron. Mark..