Dynamic Models of Arts Labor Supply

In this paper two dynamic models of an artist’s behavior and arts labor supply have been developed. Both are based on a household production function approach and on the assumption that artists are multiple-job-holders. In the first model proposed here an artist is depicted as someone who is hired on the arts labor market and paid for his artistic time. In the second model an artist is described as someone who sells his products, like paintings for instance, on the market for artistic products. In order to make these models dynamic, an artist’s productivity is here supposed to be a function of accumulated human capital of the artist. Following the results of existing empirical research, previous experience and previous artistic practice are supposed to be the most important form of human capital accumulation. Once the analysis is expanded to capture this kind of the artist’s human capital accumulation, the supply of labor in the arts market appears as the result of an inter-temporal process of resources allocation. Both models end with the same result: the cost of producing a unit of an artistic commodity in a particular year should be equal to the sum of current monetary benefits, current nonmonetary benefits, a stream of future monetary benefits, and a stream of future nonmonetary benefits generated by production of a given artistic unit. This result appears to be pretty suitable for formalization of several existing hypotheses aimed at explaining arts labor market peculiarities. Especially, by referring to the stream of expected nonmonetary benefits, models developed here are able to formalize the most promising among these hypotheses according to which an artist’s need for self-discovery and self-actualization is the driving force in explaining the oversupply of arts labor

Too Mex for the Masses: Bringing Mexican Regional Music to Market

Abstract: This article explores the exclusion of Mexican regional music from major marketing and promotional efforts within the domestic music industry, and what that elision reveals about dominant and competing claims on “Latino” ethnic identity. Despite being the bestselling Latin music genre in the U.S., regional Mexican music receives the least development backing and attracts the fewest corporate sponsors. Unlike the suave salseros and Latin-pop divas of previous “Latin booms,” no Mexican regional artist, save for Selena, has ever been primed for mainstream “crossover” success. I argue that what is at stake in promotion of various Latin genres is the construction and reification of a desirable, market-friendly image of Latinidad in the mainstream cultural imagination, one rooted in hegemonic “tropicalist” tropes of Latinos as sensual and exotic, “hot and spicy,” sentimental and sexy. These stereotypes are reinforced by the physical location of the Latin recording and entertainment industries in Miami, where Mexican artists are handled by executives more attuned to salsa-inflected or overtly Caribbean forms of music like son, merengue, cumbia, and reggaetón—styles favored more commonly by East Coast Latinos who are primarily of Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and Colombian descent. As a result, Mexicanos and Chicanos are positioned on the lowest rungs of a pan-Latino cultural hierarchy

Economists Examine File-Sharing and Music Sales

The decline in sales of music CDs and the recording industry’s attempts to reverse the decline have been much in the news over the last few years. Since this decline began at the same time that file-sharing became popular, and since file-sharing would be expected to lead to a decline in sales, file-sharing is the leading candidate among possible causes of this decline. At the center of the file-sharing debate is the empirical issue of whether or not file-sharing decreases sales. In this paper I examine the different empirical methodologies that have been chosen by economists studying this issue. The studies use different methodologies but nevertheless find, almost unanimously, that file- sharing has led to a serious decline in record sales, except for one highly publicized study that reaches very different, and in my opinion, highly implausible conclusions.mp3, filesharing, music, downloading, napster

An Empirical Investigation into the Effect of Music Downloading on the Consumer Expenditure of Recorded Music: A Time Series Approach

The downloading of music from the internet has been proliferating over the past three years. The recording industry believes that this phenomenon is responsible for the decline in recorded music sales since the year 2000 and to a certain extent; this is supported by consumer surveys and previous studies that have used panel or cross-sectional data. In this analysis, an econometric, time-series model of consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs is estimated which takes into account factors that are posited as effecting the consumption of recorded music, but not used in previous studies. The most significant finding is that music downloading, subsequent to 2000, affects consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs through the price elasticity of demand. Falling DVD prices have also served to reduce the demand of recorded music during this same period.

The Impact of Rap Music on White Youth

Music is a primary source of entertainment for American adolescents. Hip hop culture and rap music, in particular, have become the dominant genre of music among American youth. Hip hop rose primarily from the disadvantaged African American neighborhoods of New York City. Perhaps not surprisingly, though, it is White, middle class, suburban adolescents who drive the rap music industry with their disposable income and desire to resist the cultural norms of their parents’ generation. While sophisticated analyses of hip hop itself are appearing, the connection to white youth has not been well-studied. This project begins to fill this void, specifically exploring how contemporary rap music affects White middle-class American adolescents. Interviews and surveys were conducted with a sample of students from a small selective northeastern liberal arts college. These interviews and surveys focused on the presence of rap music and hip hop culture in their daily lives, assessing the ways music has penetrated youth culture and influenced their perspectives on race, gender, class-consciousness, and other pressing social issues that affect America’s youth

Pleasure and pedagogy: the consumption of DVD add-ons among Irish teenagers

This article addresses the issue of young people and media use in the digital age, more specifically the interconnection between new media pleasures and pedagogy as they relate to the consumption of DVD add-ons. Arguing against the view of new media as having predominantly detrimental effects on young people, the authors claim that new media can enable young people to develop media literacy skills and are of the view that media literacy strategies must be based on an understanding and legitimating of young people's use patterns and pleasures. The discussion is based on a pilot research project on the use patterns and pleasures of use with a sample of Irish teenagers. They found that DVDs were used predominantly in the home context, and that, while there was variability in use between the groups, overall they developed critical literacy skills and competences which were interwoven into their social life and projects of identity construction. The authors suggest that these findings could be used to develop DVDs and their add-on features as a learning resource in the more formal educational setting and they go on to outline the potential teaching benefits of their use across a range of pedagogical areas

The Disposable Blog: Using the Weblog to Facilitate Classroom Learning and Communications

This article describes two case studies: one is from a graduate course in social work practice evaluation taught by the second author; the other is from an undergraduate political science course in media and politics taught by the first author. These cases describe the way blogs, created by students and the professors, facilitate communications within the class, reduce paperwork for the professors, and let students practice their “public voices.” While the cases are specific to two courses — Masters-level social work and undergraduate political science – the concepts are easily transferred to others. The article begins with a history and literature review of blogs used pedagogically; next, the reader is walked through the creation of a blog using currently popular online tools; the next two sections are devoted to the two cases; and the final section attempts to draw some generalizations about using blogs in the classroom

Are risk preferences dynamic? : Within-subject variation in risk-taking as a function of background music

This paper investigates whether preference interactions can explain why risk preferences change over time and across contexts. We conduct an experiment in which subjects accept or reject gambles involving real money gains and losses. We introduce within-subject variation by alternating subjectively liked music and disliked music in the background. We find that favourite music increases risk-taking, and disliked music suppresses risk-taking, compared to a baseline of no music. Several theories in psychology propose mechanisms by which mood affects risktaking, but none of them fully explain our results. The results are, however, consistent with preference complementarities that extend to risk preference

Computational Music Biofeedback for Stress Relief

The purpose of our project is to use EEG technology to combat stress in our daily lives. One of the most accessible EEG technologies that targets this challenge is the Muse headband, a wearable device that pairs with a phone application to help users train their brains to relax. The applications main goal is to help users train their brain to be more relaxed by monitoring and reporting their levels of stress. However, one of the shortcomings we noticed is that the constant notifications of how stressed we are actually adds to the level of stress as opposed to helping train our brains towards a more relaxed state. In order to improve this solution, our program uses the live brain waves transmitted by the Muse headband and feedforward techniques to not only track brain users activity, but also help the user move towards a more relaxed state using music and binaural beats. While we werent able to test the system on an unbiased population due to time constraints, preliminary exploration on ourselves on both short term and longer term sessions shows that longer uses of our system led to more a relaxed state