Digital Renaissance: What Data and Economics Tell Us about the Future of Popular Culture

How digital technology is upending the traditional creative industries—and why that’s a good thing

The digital revolution poses a mortal threat to the major creative industries—music, publishing, television, and the movies. Cheap, easy self-producing is eroding the position of the gatekeepers and guardians of culture. Does this revolution herald the collapse of culture, as some commentators claim? Far from it. In Digital Renaissance, Joel Waldfogel argues that digital technology is enabling a new golden age of popular culture—a digital renaissance. Analyzing decades of production and sales data, as well as bestseller and best-of lists, Waldfogel finds that the new digital model is just as powerful at generating high-quality, successful work as the old industry model, and in many cases more so.