Digitisation has greatly expanded opportunities to reuse existing music in films, a process known as music synchronisation. This development raises important questions about whether such reuse helps audiences discover older songs and how it affects demand for music in the digital era. This seminar presents new research using panel data on Netflix and Shazam to estimate the causal effect of music synchronisation on the discovery of reused songs.
- 3pm, Thursday 21 May 2026, online
The analysis shows that songs are substantially more likely to be discovered via Shazam’s music recognition algorithm when reused in movies that get more Netflix exposure, even after controlling for song quality. It further shows evidence of reuse in movies positively affecting song consumption on the Spotify charts, indicating that movies play a significant role in boosting the demand of reused music.
These results have important implications for the policy debate on copyright and fair use and can additionally inform the negotiation of licensing rights between movie producers and music rightholders. They additionally improve our understanding of how innovations enabled by digitisation can affect the content industries.
During the session, Luis Aguiar will discuss the study’s data, methodology and findings. There will be time for Q&A following the presentation.
This 1-hour talk is part of Creative PEC‘s Seminar Series.
Speakers
Luis Aguiar
Associate Professor of Management and Economics of Digital Transformation
University of Zurich
Luis Aguiar is Associate Professor of Management and Economics of Digital Transformation and a DSI Professor with the Digital Society Initiative at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a Research Associate at the ZEW Leibniz Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany, and a Fellow of the CESifo Research Network. Prior to his appointment at the University of Zurich he was a Research Fellow in the Digital Economy Unit of the European Commission’s Joint Research Center in Seville, Spain.
Luis Aguiar’s research focuses on the economics of digitisation and online markets. His work explores the effects of technological change on firms, consumers, markets, and welfare, with a particular focus on digital media products.
Giorgio Fazio (chair)
Professor of Macroeconomics
Newcastle University
Giorgio Fazio is an applied economist with expertise in macroeconomics, trade and investment. He has published several articles in international peer-reviewed journals and chapters in edited books on issues such as exchange rates determination, crises and contagion, growth, and convergence at the national and regional levels, productivity, innovation, trade and FDI, civic and cultural capital, creative industries economics.
He has been a Creative PEC researcher since 2018, leading the work on international trade, investment and migration and contributing to economic research in the creative industries in PEC Discussion papers, blogs and peer reviewed journal articles.
Giorgio is Chair of Macroeconomics at Newcastle University Business School and since 2023 is the Research Director of the Creative Industries Policy Evidence Centre.
