Do Market Structures Matter in the Creative Industries? | by Professor Morten Hviid

The supply chain from creator to consumer goes through several vertical levels of intermediaries including agents, publishers, wholesalers and retailers. In each level, where the market is characterised by the presence of a small number of powerful actors, we would expect that these intermediaries would use their power to extract some of the moneys handed over by the consumer in return for the creative product. The more gets taken out as this money journeys from consumer to artist, the less is available to remunerate the artistic expressions. As money is often believed to be the main incentive to create, this presents a problem, which the powerful intermediaries may lobby to be solved through enabling the extraction of more money from the consumer.