Digital Platforms and Cultural Industries

The assessment of the challenges of digital platforms for cultural industries raises many different issues. How platforms choices in content pricing affect the overall value of cultural markets, especially in the case where content just aim at favoring devices’ sales? How are revenues shared between platforms and content right holders? Do creators and artists all benefit from the growth of digital platforms? How usual business models of cultural industries have to adapt to the digital paradigm? Should we observe rather a reinforcement of the star system or the emergence of a long tail? What is the impact on market concentration? Could we expect an increase or a decrease in cultural diversity? What is the role played by recommender systems, playlists and algorithms in influencing consumers’ choices? How to implement efficient public policies given the transnational dimension of digital platforms? The various papers gathered in this book contribute further to these different topics with a focus on empirical issues. The first part gathers the contributions dealing with the analysis of the impact that digital platforms have on the incumbent or legacy players of the original value chain of content industries: content providers, live entertainment producers, consumers, etc. The second part opens the black box of the ecosystem of digital platforms by studying competition among them and among the business models they adopt, as well as the conditions for the emergence of new players.

Philippe BOUQUILLION is Professor of Communication sciences at University Paris 13 – Sorbonne Paris Cite. He belongs to LabSIC research team and to the Labex ICCA. His publications deal with cultural and creative industries.

Francois MOREAU is Professor of Economics at University Paris 13 – Sorbonne Paris Cite. He belongs to the CEPN research team and heads the Scientific Advisory Board of the LabEx ICCA. His publications mainly deal with the impact of digitization on cultural industries.