Outlook for the Physical Trade in Cultural Goods [CP-2011-1]

Although the physical trade in cultural goods remains the central link in the chain of the creative economy, what future does it face in the context of the digital revolution, which is demolishing traditional industries through the double whammy of dematerialising cultural content and the partial migration of supply and transactions into the digital sphere? This short-term (i.e. up to 2015) predictive exercise takes both the identification of the major trends and the observation of the various players’ adaptive strategies as a basis for predicting three likely future industry outcomes within the four cultural sectors of recorded music, books, video games and recorded films.