Next week, 25-27 April the Rethink Music conference will take place in Boston, MA, USA. The Berkman Center has just published a great collection of papers as Briefing Book for the conference. It includes one by Yochai Benkler entitled “Voluntary Payment Models.” This is a summary of a paper whose publication I had been looking forward to ever since I learned about it: Leah Belsky, Byron Kahr, Max Berkelhammer and Yochai Benkler, Everything in Its Right Place: Social Cooperation and Artist Compensation, 17 MIch. telecoMM. tech. l. Rev. 1 (2010). The core finding of their empirical study: In a voluntary pay-what-you-like CC-licensed environment like Magnatune artists earn more than with forced fixed price like on iTunes.
I will be on a panel on “Alternative compensation schemes” with Jim Griffin, Ronaldo Lemos and Larry Lessig moderated by Terry Fisher. If you’re there come by and join the fun. You can follow the event on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
