Abstract
This chapter examines the dynamic of ‘superstar’ effects of age, length in membership in a PRO, and number of song titles registered on songwriter’s income when publishers are excluded. We found that royalty income distribution is still highly skewed and a key determinant of performance royalty income is due to the number of registered titles. This skewness of a relatively small number of songwriters earning more royalty payments than other members can be explained, in part, by successful members having a larger catalog of songs that are performed more frequently by radio and television stations, and other users of music. The standard skew-t distribution model generalized with location, scale, and a degree of freedom parameter (ν) is used to analyze royalty income.
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Pitt, I.L. (2010). Economics of Songwriters’ Performance Royalty Income: Tenure, Age, and Titles. In: Economic Analysis of Music Copyright. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6318-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6318-5_7
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