Creative industries: contracts between art and commerce

"This book explores the organization of creative industries, including the visual and performing arts, movies, theater, sound recordings, and book publishing. In each, artistic inputs are combined with other, "humdrum" inputs. But the deals that bring these inputs together are inherently problematic: artists have strong views; the muse whispers erratically; and consumer approval remains highly uncertain until all costs have been incurred."

"To explain the logic of these arrangements, the author draws on the analytical resources of industrial economics and the theory of contracts. He addresses the winner-take-all character of many creative activities that brings wealth and renown to some artists while dooming others to frustration; why the "option" form of contract is so prevalent; and why even savvy producers get sucked into making "ten-ton turkeys," such as Heaven's Gate."--Jacket.

Artists as apprentices -- Artists, dealers, and deals -- Artist and gatekeeper: trade books, popular records, and classical music -- Artists, starving and well-fed -- The Hollywood studios disintegrate -- Contracts for creative products: films and plays -- Guilds, unions, and faulty contracts -- The nurture of ten-ton turkeys -- Creative products go to market: books and records -- Creative products go to market: films -- Buffs, buzz, and educated tastes -- Consumers, critics, and certifiers -- Innovation, fads, and fashions -- Covering high fixed costs -- Donor-supported nonprofit organizations in the performing arts -- Cost disease and its analgesics -- Durable creative goods: rents pursued through time and space -- Payola -- Organizing to collect rents: music copyrights -- Entertainment conglomerates and the quest for rents -- Filtering and storing durable creative goods: visual arts -- New versus old art: Boulez meets Beethoven.