Platforms are growing increasingly powerful, raising questions about whether their power might be exercised with bias. While bias is inherently difficult to measure, we identify a context within the music industry that is amenable to bias testing. Our approach requires ex ante platform...

We explore the consequence of quality unpredictability for the welfare benefit of new products, using recent developments in recorded music as our context. Digitization has expanded consumption opportunities by giving consumers access to the "long tail" of existing products, rather than simply...

Recorded music revenue has fallen sharply since the appearance of the first digital sharing technology (Napster) in 1999. By 2012, it was down by about 70 percent in North America and Europe compared to 1999. Several factors may have contributed to this decline in revenue, including the change...