Empirical evidence on musicians? Careers and earnings: the role of copyright

The available data on authors’ and artists’ earnings come from three different sources: (a) government statistics (census, labour market surveys, tax); (b) questionnaire surveys of specific professional groups; and (c) collecting society payments. For the purposes of assessing the possible contribution of copyright law to authors’ and artists’ earnings, two aspects are of particular interest. (1) The level and distribution of earnings for cultural workers, compared to other professions; (2) Earnings from the principal artistic activity compared to other sources of earnings. The evidence shows that the median (typical) earnings of authors and artists are well below national average wages, although a small number of authors and artists earn very well. These winner-take-all characteristics of cultural markets are even more pronounced in the music sector where the top 10% of composers/songwriters account for almost 90% of the total earnings of the profession. Most professional authors and artists rely on a second job to survive. For composers, earnings from copyright royalties account on average for less than a quarter of creative income; for musicians, earnings from royalties account for about 1% of creative income. Copyright law in its current form is a weak and skewed regulatory mechanism for awarding authors and artists