Professor Peter DiCola of Northwestern University Law School is the author of an interesting new study, Money from Music: Survey Evidence on Musicians’ Revenue and Lessons About Copyright Incentives.

In the course of the study, thousands of musicians (including performers and composers) were surveyed in order to try to determine accurately how musicians earn revenue. After all, our copyright system under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution is based on financial incentives, rather than on copyright being a natural right of creators. Knowing with precision if and how the copyright system pays off (literally) for the creators of works should be useful in determining future copyright law policy. […]