Digital Renaissance

Digital Renaissance uses empirical data to show that the digitization of media has led to a flood of art, but that its average quality hasn’t changed.

Back before the internet, artists had to wait to “get discovered” before they could afford to support their crafts. Talent scouts and their employers poured vast amounts of money into identifying, developing, and marketing specially-chosen beneficiaries – the stars-to-be.

Waldfogel calls this the “adult supervision” model of cultural production. You needed help from the establishment to get your foot in its door. But many of these expensive stars-to-be, including authors, actors, and singers, still turned out to be huge flops!

That’s because taste is subjective and notoriously difficult to predict. For instance, you might think that the success of a high-budget Star Wars movie is all but assured at this point. But 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story earned less than it cost.

When it comes to art, nobody knows anything. This includes even the experienced industry professionals who used to do all the supervising of, and investing in, artists before the internet. The “nobody knows anything” effect partially explains why digitization’s permission-free environment has produced lots of artistic works that consumers love.

If the gatekeepers of culture are so often wrong about what will become successful, then letting artists bypass them by self-publishing, for example, means more good works come into being than otherwise would have.

Usually, worker productivity gains are good news. But some people worry about the post-digitization creative industry trend that the services of fewer and fewer people are needed to produce the art consumers want.

For instance, movie industry jobs dropped almost 20% between 2013 and 2014. Films grossed less money, too. Is the collapse of creativity imminent? It would be awful to live in a world without art. But it’s unlikely we’ll have to any time soon.

Despite this fall in artistic industry hiring and revenues, the amount of art available to consumers since digitization has shot through the roof.

Moreover, Waldfogel shows that various indicators of quality strongly suggest that regular people like the art they consume at least as much as ever. Movies may actually be getting better, despite requiring smaller crews to produce.

Although artistic earnings and employment have declined, production costs have plummeted too. So while some workers need to retrain and find new work, the overall social value of more good art outweighs the cost to those specific individuals.

Ultimately, more art can flow more easily into the hands of consumers through their digital devices.