Dynamic Product Positioning in Differentiated Product Industries: The Effect of Fees for Musical Performance Rights on the Commercial Radio Industry.
Andrew Sweeting
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5
(
81
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Econometrica
1763-1803
September
2013
sweeting_radioformat_ecma.pdf359.06 KB
Abstract
This article predicts how radio station formats would change if, as was recently proposed, music stations were made to pay fees for musical performance rights. It does so by estimating and solving, using parametric approximations to firms’ value functions, a dynamic model that captures important features of the industry such as vertical and horizontal product differentiation, demographic variation in programming tastes, and multi-station ownership. The estimated model predicts that high fees would cause the number of music stations to fall significantly and quite quickly.