Innovations in Pricing in Digital D istribution

Digital Distribution of Music

Brief History of Music Pricing

The music industry is composed of basically 3 structures that shape the dynamics of this industry. Composers and songwriters create songs, lyrics and perform live on stage. This is recorded and distributed to customers or licensed for some other use. This structure has divided the music industry in 3 parts: the recorded music industry—focused on recording and distribution of music to consumers; the music licensing industry—primarily licensing compositions and arrangements to businesses; and live music—focused on producing and promoting live entertainment, such as concerts, tours, etc.

Music Artists earlier required the support of a record label to produce, promote and distribute music. However the pricing mechanism was more based on historical prices rather than competition. Artists signed exclusive contracts with record labels, which enabled the record labels to charge retail price levels consistent with how much a customer is willing to pay rather than the quality of the music, resulting in consistent pricing strategies.

In the 1960s, the distribution of music in the form of albums gained ground. Record labels created music bundles that increased its fan-following. This gave the record labels an opportunity to raise prices for additional content. However, the pricing mechanism for full-length albums stayed relatively consistent across albums and artists regardless of its quality or popularity. A highly popular music album had the same cost structure as an unpopular one. Many releases were not able to recover their upfront production costs. Consistent pricing strategies made matters worse. Record labels had to rely on the success of a few albums to make up the losses incurred by a majority of unpopular releases.

The Growth of Digital Music

The music industry has experienced significant changes in the past decade with the growth of internet and digital distribution. It all started with the launch of a file sharing service called Napster by Shawn Fanning that allowed users to download and share music without compensating the recognized rights holder. However, it was eventually forced to shut down by music industry. This service ushered in a new era of music digitization.

The first company that was able to create a successful online service for legal sales and distribution of music was Apple, through its service iTunes Music store. Apple was able to convince the major labels that music consumers would buy music legally if they were offered an extremely simple service that allowed them to buy and download music for less than a dollar per track. The retail sales of recorded music in United States dropped from US$13 billion in 1999 to US$10.6 billion in 2003[1]. During the same time, Apple iTunes customers expanded from 861,000 in July 2003 to 4.9 million in March 2004 [2], signaling the popularity of digital music. The music industry’s digital revenue grew by 4.3% in 2013 to US$5.9 billion. Globally, digital now accounts for 39 percent of total industry global revenues and in three of the world’s top 10 markets.

Current Digital Music Pricing

Shapiro and Varian [7] describe three strategies for pricing information goods: versioning, bundling, and fixed-fee pricing. Digital music track bundles can be purchased for a fixed price. It comprises of a full album or some compilation of tracks compiled by the service provider. Altinkemer and Bandyopadhyay [6] demonstrate the application of flexible bundling strategies for digitized music based on an economic model. Different prices for different versions of digital music have also started to surface. For example, BuyMusic from Buy.com provides 256 kbps songs for a premium price. Also, many online digital music retailers offer full-content or partial-content “try-before-buying” versions with lower audio quality. Previously, Naxos (www.naxos.com), a leading discount classical music label, provided full download capabilities for individuals, although recently they have altered their strategy to only permit potential customers to download 25% of the total content. Music versioning is also being considered in the physical CD market. BMG Germany began testing a new pricing model by offering three-tier versioned CDs: a €9.99 low-quality version with no cover art; a €12.99 medium-quality standard version; and a €17.99 high-quality version with bonus tracks and online extras (www.bertlesmann.com)

Moorthy and Png [3] suggest that offering multiple versions of a physical good allows retailers to reach a market segment that may not already be served, yielding higher profits. Riggins [4] extends their model to an information good setting with tiered Web sites. However, the same characteristics of information-based goods that allow for easy versioning also allow unscrupulous users to violate copyrights by engaging in piracy activities. Wu et al. [5] have argued that it is even possible to fight the piracy of information goods with versioning. Still, versioning may become an effective tool in digital music pricing and marketing because it promotes self-selection.

There are two basic pricing strategies for digital music: song based purchase pricing and subscription services. iTunes was a pioneer in song based pricing mechanism by offering a simple service to buy and download music for less than a dollar. In 2013, iTunes Music Store was the world’s largest music retailer (offline and online) and it had sold more than 25 billion songs since its launch in 2003. Apart from the digital download service provided by iTunes, more radical legal music services also came into picture. These services did not offer individual tracks at a set price, but offer the user access to a large music library which they may listen at their leisure. The users normally pay a monthly subscription fee that allows them to listen to as many songs in the library as they want, how often as they want.

However, these access-based music services have struggled to convince record labels to license their catalog to their services as well as convince users to enjoy music without actually buying and owning a copy of the track or album. The challenges are certainly considerable but the music service that so far has received the most attention of the international music industry and the one that could possibly have found the right path is a service called Spotify. It has been able to transform the mindsets of both users and rights holders and will most likely be a music technological milestone on the magnitude of the Walkman, the Compact Disc, and Apple iTunes.

Spotify model was an ad-supported music service that would be free for music listeners but the ads would generate revenues for licenses to copyright holders. Over the years Spotify has moved from being a service solely funded by advertisements to a more advanced version, which is funded by subscription fees also.

Spotify’s model with two or more different service versions where the most basic version is free and the more advanced versions are offered on a subscription basis is usually called freemium—a play on the words free and premium. Often, the profit margin for the free version is very low, or even negative, and it is expected that it is the subscription fees that will generate enough revenues to make the service profitable. The logic behind a freemium service model is that users shall be willing to use the service for free and that they while using the service gradually will make behavioral and emotional investments in the service that will increase the costs and efforts to switch to another service. The goal is to make as many of the users of the free version to convert to the subscription version. In order to achieve that goal, the free version has to have a number of increasingly annoying features (such as advertising) or lack a few key features (such as the ability to use the service on certain devices) that are removed/ available on the premium versions of the service. In Spotify’s case it has achieved a conversion rate of approximately 20 percent, which means that 20 percent of the total user base is using the premium version and pay a monthly subscription fee. Spotify has reported that 70 percent of their revenues from ads and subscriptions has been paid in royalties to rights holders. At the end of 2013, the company has generated more than a billion dollars for rights holders around the world, which according to Spotify is proof that their model does work.

Online Music and Videos

Another recent phenomenon in music digital distribution has been the advent of internet radio and online streaming platforms. The surge in smartphone markets has given a boost to this segment as well. Applications such as Pandora, Google music, YouTube etc. operate in this segment. These services play videos and music online based on the user selection. The pricing mechanisms involve a free subscription supported by advertisements and a fee based subscription without ads. YouTube for example embeds advertisements to its free videos and these advertisements are the major source of its revenues.

Online audio distribution has further evolved, enabling its users not just to listen shared songs but also upload, record, promote and share originally-created sounds. Sound cloud which has over 40 million registered users and 200 million listeners is one its kind. These applications also work on a freemium basis, providing a limited sharing space for free and charging premium if the sharing space has to be increased. In this way it provides opportunity to aspirating artists and musicians to bring their sound to the world.

Current Licensing Environment

The Digital services discussed above are required to license two separate copyrights: the sound recording copyright and the underlying musical composition copyright. The sound recording copyright is controlled by record labels, while publishers and songwriters own the latter. The picture becomes even more complicated considering the numerous independent labels, publishing companies, individual performing artists and songwriters whose licenses add tremendous perceived and actual value to a digital music service. Multiple owners further complicate the process of obtaining a license due to disagreements among the owners of a copyright.

This means that services such as iTunes or eMusic must secure individual licenses from every sound recording they offer. Apart from the download stores, broadcast streams must also obtain public performances from both sound recording copyright owner and music composition copyright owner.

Each of the services discussed have to negotiate licenses with labels and publishers in order to build a catalog vast enough to attract listeners.

Piracy Control

Tackling piracy and maintaining the shift to licensed consumption remains very challenging in markets which have the highest potential. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), global piracy of music causes $12.5 billion in economic losses every year and has contributed to a 50% decline in CD sales over the last decade [8]. This has brought the concept of digital rights management (DRM) technologies that make copying difficult. DRM controls how end users can access, copy, or convert information goods, such as software, music, movies, or books. For example, the original iTunes Fairplay DRM system restricted users from installing music on more than five authorized computers or burning a song more than seven times, and songs downloaded from Walmart Music can be played only on Windows PlaysForSure licensed products [9]. Other digital goods also have some form of DRM—a movie purchased and downloaded from the iTunes store can only be played on an authorized computer, and books purchased for the Kindle cannot be read on any other device. All these constraints are designed to protect digital products from unauthorized copying and distribution and thus reduce the level of piracy.

Recent Developments

Improvements in the handling of user generated content (UGC) have been of immense help to rights holders allowing them to grow income from YouTube and other licensed platforms. Taking the case of Google’s ContentID system (and other systems used by other platforms), these platforms have made it easier for rights holders to differentiate between video types, thereby allowing the streaming of non-official user-generated content such as mashups to be licensed and generate revenue, rather than removed for infringing copyright. YouTube’s TrueView tool for advertising is also having a positive impact in monetizing music videos. According to YouTube, revenues generated from UGC on its platform have now overtaken those generated by official videos. You tube, until now had an exclusive advertising –supported service, is planning to enter subscription based pricing for its content. Internet Radio has also incorporated effective pricing mechanisms to generate revenues from stores. For example, iTunes radio service has the feature of a buy button which directs listeners to iTunes store. Artists in countries with high rates of streaming have recognized the benefits of streaming based revenue model giving their songs a longer life. There has now been a major focus to create music based applications on mobile further expanding the sources of revenues.

Digital Distribution in Video Games

Pricing in the Digital World

Digitization is seen as a threat to revenue and profitability by many components of the different entertainment industries. The biggest example is the oft-quoted ‘‘trade cable dollars for internet pennies’’. Although the evolution of content, services, and software to digital formats can indeed destroy a traditional business’s profitability, often however it is poor transition management that is to blame.

According to Docters [14], some of the changes that accompany the shifting from traditional to digital are splitting of product from services, splitting products into sub-categories and re-bundling them,

embedding new content and functionality, improved coordination among parties to a transaction, greater customization by segment and user, disintermediation between users, buyers, R&D, and product management.

There are three principles that ought to be kept in mind while developing a pricing strategy in the digital world:

1. Digitization should be seen as an evolution and not revolution and segmentation needs to reflect this in a realistic manner.

2. The unit for charging has to change with the shifting requirements and as it fits the market in question.

3. Where there is a multi-element (sophisticated) sale, changing the lead element can make all the difference. A Free is more often an option in the digital world due to lower incremental costs, and so add-ons can precede the main product.

There is very little benchmarking that can be done with reference to other industries in digital distribution as it varies not just from one industry to the other but also from one product to another. For a company that has not matured enough when it comes to pricing, it might be a good approach to let the market decide, and to separate the price and product development on existing product lines. Give both digital and non-digital products their best shot. This approach actually requires less effort than reorganizing all the resources to emphasize the new digital product.

The Digital Entertainment Revolution

This study conducted by CapGemini [15] discusses the revolutionary changes to the entertainment industry that will be brought upon by the digital age in the coming years. This is not limited to the music and gaming industry but even TV and movie industry are forecasting massive changes. These industries are analyzed for their compatibility with the new shifts and how the present business models would have to be modified to still have a future. Shifts in Business Models are Inevitable to gain advantage in this highly competitive market. There will be large scale disruption caused by the impact of digital and the rapidly changing demands of consumers with more control than ever before. Changes will have to be made to physical and digital operations in order and a cost structure balancing the size and margins associated with shift in physical and digital content sales will have to be invented. But it’s not only challenges. Unprecedented opportunities to engage customers 24/7 will present themselves through this connectivity. With changes to the IT systems, interconnecting with content delivery networks, advancements in advertising capabilities and creation of entirely new interfaces with distribution partners, companies stand a chance to tap into $10 billion in revenue opportunities made possible by the advent of digital electronic entertainment.

Video games are well positioned to benefit from the digital transition. Unlike the movie and music industry, video games are inherently interactive, have multiple “pause points” that permit the gameplay to be interrupted and return to it whenever convenient. Features that improve the user’s experience, connect with online communities, and provide downloadable extensions that extend gameplay time or add features to the original version of the game can be very easily provided and are an integral part of the gaming industry strategy.

Future trends of the industry are discussed with reference to the increasing penetration of digital technology and internet in the industry, improvements in technology, the invasion of PC in the living room and changing buying and consumer behavior.

The Obstacles and Opportunities for Digital Distribution

Grutzky [16] focuses on the opportunities and obstacles for digital distribution in the video game industries and its implications for the industry actors such as the retailers, the developers, the payment solution providers and the publishers. The video game industry today has a significantly higher turnover than even the film industry and the consequences of changing the distribution forms can be enormous. The video game industry is going through a significant change in how the consumers are and will eventually obtain the content. Digital distribution, increasing internet bandwidth, curtailing of the used game market, increased prevalence of e-commerce are some of the factors that will eventually lead to the disappearing of specialized retail stores for video games.

The paper tries to answer the questions of the future of video game retail, whether it will develop or decline, the obstacles in digital distribution and the movement towards smaller digital packages. Two methods of information collection have been used, a literature study and semi-structured interviews. The traditional video game distribution industry is discussed followed by an analysis of the existing video game value chain. Different revenue models that have been discussed are free to play / micro transactions, subscription model, episodic entertainment and advertisement driven. The digital distribution is discussed and then compared against the existing digital music industry.

The paper declares that hardware compatibility, piracy, DRM, the lack of computing power in most laptops and the rise of console gaming have led to the decline of video game retailing. They see bandwidth, hard drive space on consoles and decent technical support as being the main obstacle for digital distribution. The current trend of breaking up albums into songs and then selling them for cheap is not a direction that can be taken up by the games industry as the initial investment will be much larger for the video game. A SWOT analysis is done for the digital distribution framework. The strengths are unlimited supply, rapidly growing business and increased customer value with 24-hour access without travel. The weaknesses are strong dependency on the development of bandwidth infrastructure, limited hard drive storage space on consoles, lack of drive storage space on consoles, lack of personal service and lack of options for youth. The opportunities are ability to use different price points and micro-transactions, new revenue streams from digital content, diminishment of used game sales and increased piracy control. The threats are new players taking over the market, resistance from retailers and diminishment of the retail channel and fear of low payment security.

Value Modelling in Online Digital Distribution

Online markets are very dynamic and have grown continuously in a very short span of time and have emerged as the main marketplace for many products and services. Within this marketplace, there is a section which caters to selling products which are software themselves, not just the transaction. The video game industry constitutes a huge chunk of this market. It is characterized by big volumes of sales and a very complex market. The variety of business models used by the companies in the sector has led to a variety of innovative solutions which are of great interest to areas outside the digital domain. This paper aims to enhance the value chain with a set of logic rules to manage price policy and choose the most effective value model for given market characteristics with the ultimate goal of building a tool

which, once provided with information on the market (number of clients, average payment per user), can compute the expected volumes of value exchange and recommend a business model that best fits market demands.

Ceci [17] discusses the current video game market on the bases of price elasticity, price levels, menu costs and price dispersion. It also analyses the various pricing models currently prevalent in the market such as micro transactions involving both virtual goods and dual currency, subscription, free to play, crowdfunding, early access and DRM.

A similar pricing model may be in employment by Steam which is one of the biggest online distributor of video games. Its pricing is very arbitrary and communities are built around specific products by means of special sales. Prices are not bound to fixed costs and can be managed with flexibility. This semi-automatic management of prices fulfils three goals, maximizes the revenue from the business process, optimizing the number of paying users while avoiding measures such as DRMs and grants access to digital entertainment to all types of consumers by simply rearranging (virtual currency, free-to-play, special sales) the method how different customers are likely to purchase the product.

Prohibition of Resale Markets for Information Goods

According to existing research frictionless resale markets are unable to decrease the profits of monopolist producers of perfectly durable goods. Therefore producers should welcome a well-functioning resale market activities. However this paper suggests that these findings do not hold true for goods such as video games where users tire of the product after repeated use by presenting logical arguments. These resale goods end up fulfilling a residual demand and fetch a low price discouraging forward looking customers who would have otherwise factored a high resale price in their buying decision. This assumption also implies that the impact of resale is an empirical question. In the video game market producers can and most likely would legally prevent resale by distributing their products digitally as downloads or streamed rentals. The above empirical assumption is thereby applied to this market. Estimation is then done in two steps. First, demand parameters are estimated using a dynamic discrete choice model in a market where resale is allowed, using data on new sales and used trade-ins. Secondly, with these parameter estimates, prices, profits, and consumer welfare are simulated under counterfactual environments.

The data was constructed from two datasets, the NPD group, provides information on monthly sales and average prices of new copies of video games by game in the U.S. and the second dataset contains used game auctions from an online marketplace over November 2005 to December 2008. These latter data serve as a proxy for the monthly quantity of used games traded-in by consumers which then needs to be scaled up to be at the same level of entire US region. Time-invariant variables include game characteristics like critic review scores from the NPD group and “replay value” scores from reviews.

The results show that profits from selling video games would be higher by 100% for non-resellable goods. The increase in amount was sensitive to the assumed market size. Non-resellable good profits were also much higher than rental profits, almost 100%. These findings stand in contrast to most previous empirical and theoretical papers focusing on products for which consumers do not lose interest which found that monopolist’s profits do not decrease with frictionless resale. The difference in findings suggests that the rate at which consumers lose interest has high impact on resale on producer profits. This can help policy makers in deciding the mode of sale since the types of goods matching this

assumption, such as entertainment information products can be distributed as non-resellable downloads.

Digital Distribution of Movies and TV ShowsEmergence of online movie and TV shows distribution

Changing technological and lifestyle trends over the past decade or so have threatened to derail the conventional cable TV industry. With a desire for convenience, and the opportunity to freely access content without any time restrictions at a relatively low cost; online streaming is rapidly gaining popularity as a means of watching TV.Gaming consoles are an especially fast-growing platform for online streaming. 39% of homes own ‘7th Generation Gaming Consoles’, i.e. consoles that have the capability to stream videos. These include the Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3, and Nintendo’s Wii. Access to these additional streaming services requires a monthly subscription fee in the region of $15 paid to the console owner – however this gives one access to all internet-enabled content as well as bonus gaming features. It does not require an additional fee to Netflix, Hulu or YouTube or any of the streaming platforms themselves.

Another major revolution to the streaming industry has been the introduction of Roku. The company was founded in 2002 in California, and offers a product that is similar to a set-top box that is similar to what cable operators provide. Roku however functions completely through the Internet, and is organized in the form of channels. Users can add and remove channels as they please, and will only pay for what they consume. In addition, it is an economically viable for the TV consumer. Roku has 4 types of boxes available, the cheapest of which is a one-time cost of $5015. Roku merges the key elements of traditional cable/satellite TV (high quality programming, access to a variety of channels) with those of YouTube (user-generated, niche content) to create a concoction that is in many ways the best of both worlds.

According to Pisharody[19], from a consumer standpoint, there are two major drawbacks of the current television model: a lack of flexibility and the potential for clutter. Cable and satellite services are usually structured as a packaged deal featuring a multitude of channels and programming. While access to more content may be desirable in some ways, most consumers have very specific tastes in terms of what they want, thereby rendering most of the channels they subscribe to worthless16. Additionally, cable limits the consumer to only watching shows one their television sets and at a specific time.

Smartphones and social networking in particular have changed the way in which people interact with media and the outside world. The combined availability of streaming services and multiple devices have enabled consumers to pick and choose what they watch and bypass the conventional cable model should they wish to do so. 48% of 5 million households in US watch TV content through subscription services, reiterating the value of being able to choose and pay for what you watch[1].

Purchase PreferencesAccording to 2013 report on Accenture video over internet consumer survey [2], the following were the major findings: The majority of consumers (62%) are willing to pay for a monthly subscription to access on-demand content on a PC, TV or tablet. Despite the difficult economic climate where ancillary or secondary expenses are drastically reduced there is an element of resilience in paying for online video services. However, most consumers report they will pay the equivalent of less than $10 on a monthly basis. The propensity to pay remains particularly strong in regular subscription and TV license fee models more than in pay per view. While 37 percent of consumers pay for access to video content through a regular subscription or TV license fee, just 10 percent of respondents reported paying per view for video on-demand, down from 12 percent in 2012. These results show an important media consumption trend, where the transactional model is no longer the preferred way to pay for entertainment.

Consumers increasingly scrutinize the content for which they will pay a premium. As online consumption is maturing, and consumers are getting more sophisticated, they want to pay less for content overall, but they will pay more for getting specifically what they want. In other words, if providers demonstrate value in premium content, consumers are willing to pay. Otherwise they will opt for consuming content for free: two-thirds of consumers said they mainly watch free video content.

Similarly, 45 percent of consumers would be interested in an à la carte menu for their video/TV access to show only their top 10 most watched channels. Among those interested in an à la carte menu, 70 percent said they would expect at least a 25 percent reduction in their monthly TV bill for this approach. 41 percent said they would expect a reduction of 50 percent or more.In short, consumers confirm that they have an appetite for online video and are willing to pay for good content, making watching online a viable source of revenue.

Business ModelsA study commissioned by European Commission [21] on the business models for the sale of online videos lists the following models:1. Platforms for digital content rentals, on which the film is downloaded / streamed for a specific

period of time (up to 30 days or 24 or 48 hours) and DRM technologies prevent playback after agreed rental period

2. Platforms to download movies to own and pay-per-item, e.g. Apple’s iTunes store; either with or without the right to record the movie on DVD. Content portability is often restricted

3. Producer/broadcaster platforms to stream movies from libraries or archives of TV stations or AppleTV or Zattoo; usually sold on subscription on the basis of monthly or yearly fee. DRM technologies prevent the video from being watched after the subscription expires; The video version of the “freemium model” attracts consumers with a package of “free” ad-supported channels and gives the option of paying more and receiving premium content without advertising;

4. Advertising-based free of charge streaming of videos, mostly applied to independent or low-budget productions

5. Free-of-charge streaming or downloads of limited movies for marketing reasons

6. Platforms for hosting self-made online videos of users, e.g. YouTube7. Platforms in social networks in partnership with online video services, e.g. Facebook and 8. YouTube. 9. Consumers may download or stream from a variety of platforms, including Internet-enabled

television, PC´s, console game player or smartphones.

Encouraging Digital Video CollectionResearch findings by Dr.Steirer [22] show the following ways to encourage digital video consumption:1. Electronic video sell-through services should consider implementing artificial supply constraints on

digital video products—either through limited sales windows or as part of a versioning strategy—in order to spur collecting.

2. An in-service resale market would increase the value of ownership for consumers; if fees are priced correctly, such a market should not result in decreased revenue.

3. A Digital Rights Management system that managed and provided for the exercise of consumers’ rights in addition to those of copyright holders would supply added value to digital video; such a service could also be used to rehabilitate DRM in the eyes of consumers.

4. A digital video service could obtain a strong competitive advantage by fully integrating its own Web 2.0-styled communication tools; too heavy a reliance upon external social networking services such as Facebook hinders the formation of service-based communities.

References

1. Keegan, P. Is the music store over? Business 2.0 Online (March 2004),www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,591734,00.html

2. Borland, J. and Fried, I. iTunes ushers in a year of change. CNET News (April 26, 2004), news.com.com/2102-1027_3-5199227.html

3. Moorthy, K.S., and Png, I.P.L. Market segmentation, cannibalization, and the timing of product introductions. Management Science, 38, 3 (March 1992), 345-359

4. Riggins, F.J. Market segmentation and information development costs in a two-tiered fee-based and sponsorship-based web site. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19, 3 (Winter 2003), 69-87

5. Wu, S. Y.; Chen, P. Y.; and Anadalingam, G. Fighting information goods piracy with versioning. In J. Valacich, L. Jessup, and J. DeGross (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Information Systems, Seattle, WA, December 2003, 617-621

6. Altinkemer, K. and Bandyopadhyay, S. Bundling and distribution of digitized music over the Internet. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 10, 3 (2000), 209-224

7. Shapiro, C. and Varian, H. R. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999

8. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), global piracy of music causes $12.5 billion in economic losses every year and has contributed to a 50% decline in CD sales over the last decade (RIAA 2009)

9. Duchene, A., M. Peitz, P. Waelbroeck. 2005. Marketing digital music: Can DRM help? Telecom Paris Economics Working Paper EC-05-02, Telecom Paris, Paris. http://ssrn.com/abstract=739247

10. Patrik Wikström, The Music Industry in an Age of Digital Distribution, Change-Essays on How Internet Is Changing Our Lives

11. Jesse C. Bockste, Robert J. Kauffman, Frederick J. Riggins(2005). The move to artist-led online music distribution: a theory-based assessment and prospects for structural changes in the digital music market (2005)

12. Dinah A. Vernik, Devavrat Purohit, Preyas S. Desai(2014). Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management

13. IFPI Digital Music Report 2014, Lighting up New Markets(2014)

14. Docters, R.; Tilstone, L. et al. Pricing In The Digital World, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 32 Iss 4 pp. 4 - 11 (2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02756661111150927

15. Kaufhold, G. The Digital Entertainment Revolution, Market research by Capgemini, February 2010

16. Grutzky, Michael B. The Obstacles and Opportunities for Digital Distribution in the Video Game Industry, Today and Tomorrow, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden,2010

17. Ceci, M. Rules for Value Modelling in Online Digital Distribution: the Video Game Industry

18. Shiller, B.R. Digital Distribution and the Prohibition of Resale Markets for Information Goods, Brandeis University, December 2012

19. Pisharody, A. Will broadcast and cable television networks survive the emergence of online streaming?” by Aditya Pisharody, Stern School of Business, New York University

20. Accenture Video over internet consumer survey, 2012

21. “Study on digital content products in the EU”, IBF international consulting

22. Media Industries Project, 2012, Connected Viewing Initiative, UC Santa Barbara

23. “Towards a framework for digital rights”, June 2010, a research study from CFTPA: http://www.cmpa.ca/sites/all/themes/cmpa/content/studies/CFTPA_DIGITAL_RIGHTS_STUDY_June_2010.pdf