Dear ETA readers! As 2025 draws to a close, we’re taking a moment to look back at an incredible year of research and insights shared right here on the blog. From the gender gap in classical music to the secrets of successful art collectors, this year, we’ve published 21 posts that explored how economic principles shape and are shaped by the world of art, culture, and creativity.
Here is a quick resume of the ground we covered, sorted by four major themes that defined our conversation in 2025.
🎧 Theme 1: The Digital and Unequal Landscape of Music
The digital revolution promised a level playing field, but our research showed that inequality persists—and sometimes deepens—on streaming and creative platforms.
- Streaming’s Uneven Tune Federico Pilati, Antoine Houssard, and Pier Luigi Sacco explored how platforms like Bandcamp, despite their indie ethos, still struggle with the inequalities that plague mainstream streaming services.
- How to Make a Hit Gabriel Henriques Galvão, Ana Flávia Machado, and Lucas Resende de Carvalho analyzed over half a million Spotify tracks to uncover the precise factors—like energy and danceability—that truly make a song popular in the streaming era.
- Songs and Narratives – Does It Matter? Moving beyond simple audio data, Jürgen Rösch and Maxi-Josephine Rauch discovered that the emotional arc in lyrics (especially darker ones) can be a silent driver of a song’s success and audience votes.
- Unequal Notes: Human Capital and the Gender Gap Among Composers Looking at the history of Western classical music, Karol J. Borowiecki, Martin H. Kristensen, and Marc T. Law revealed how limited access to training and human capital opportunities historically overshadowed female composers.
🎨 Theme 2: The Evolving Art Market and Investment
This year, we delved into the complex mechanisms and changing faces of the art market, from fractional ownership to the signals that drive auction prices.
- Are Art Collectors Venture Capitalists? Amy Whitaker and Roman Kräussl made an investigation into the collecting habits of Burton and Emily Hall Tremaine showed that some early collectors act much like venture-stage investors, investing early and reaping massive returns.
- Art Auctions Uncovered Seohyeon Hwang, Jiye Ryu, and Kihoon Hong found a strong warning sign for collectors: in Korean art auctions, a price decline sends an even stronger negative signal than an artwork that was previously bought-in (failed to sell).
- Not Just Another Crypto Scheme With the rise of platforms offering fractional art ownership, Jiaxin Liu, Boram Lee, and Ruth Rentschler explored what it takes for these new, blockchain-based art investment platforms to gain legitimacy with traditional investors.
🏛️ Theme 3: Culture, Place, and Participation
Where we live, who we are, and how we access culture were key questions this year, exploring how proximity, identity, and policy shape cultural engagement.
- How Spatial Distance Shapes Cultural Consumption Using GPS data from French cities, Lorenzo Biferale, Maria Giovanna Brandano, Alessandro Crociata, and Hygor Piaget Monteiro Melo confirmed that while proximity to cultural venues matters, socio-economic factors like education and income are the most significant drivers of cultural participation.
- The Impact of Culture on Location Choices Focusing on mobile populations, Olivier Mouate and Muriel Travers explored the extent to which cultural amenities influence the interurban location choices of French students.
- Digital Transformation and Cultural Consumption Roberto Cellini and Tiziana Cuccia, using data from Italy, showed that digitalization is complementing live cultural access, but policymakers must address socioeconomic disparities to ensure technology promotes truly inclusive participation.
- Opening Doors: Welcoming People with Disabilities in Arts Centers The study by Manuel Cuadrado-García, María-Luisa Palma-Martos, and Juan D. Montoro-Pons offered practical suggestions for arts centers to become more inclusive, highlighting what makes cultural experiences meaningful and suggests practical ways to make culture more inclusive for everyone.
- I Like Participatory Museums… But, To What Extent? María José del Barrio-Tellado , Fátima Espinosa-Casero , Jonathan Daniel Gómez-Zapata and Luis César Herrero-Prieto’s research uncovered a mismatch between the expectations of communities and the actual implementation of participatory practices in museums.
- Do Cultural Districts Boost Local Jobs? Javier E. Portillo and Gary A. Wagner investigated the popular urban strategy of designating cultural districts, analyzing whether they actually succeed in boosting local employment.
- Putting the Periphery on the Map Drawing on millions of TripAdvisor reviews, Karol J. Borowiecki, Maja U. Pedersen, and Marco Palomeque showed that Europe’s coastal villages and mountain towns are increasingly vital to the future of sustainable tourism.
🧑💻 Theme 4: Labor, Innovation, and Applied Economics
A central thread in our year was understanding the lives of creative workers, the drivers of innovation, and the economics of niche cultural industries.
- The Economics of Fine Dining In the complex market for fine dining, Francesco Angelini, Massimiliano Castellani, and Pierpaolo Pattitoni explored how the views of experts, consumers, and chefs all interact to determine a restaurant’s success.
- Navigating Quality Signals in the Wine Market Dubois Magalie investigated the unique challenge of assessing quality in the wine market, contrasting the roles of expert evaluations versus peer reviews in guiding consumer choice.
- Trends in Concert Ticket Pricing Dylan Thompson looked beyond ticket scalping to understand how musicians are actually setting their prices in an increasingly complex and sophisticated market.
- Passionately or Reluctantly Independent? By comparing artistic and non-artistic self-employment in the Netherlands, Ellen Loots, Bas Bosma, Paul Stroet, and Arjen van Witteloostuijn extended research on the key motivations that drive workers into self-employed artistic work.
- Who Gets Counted as an Artist? Joanna Woronkowicz, Douglas Noonan, and Harry Cash Malone revealed major gaps in how artists are officially defined and how to design more inclusive policies for creative workers.
- Amateur Artists and Startup Innovation Timothy Wojan revealed surprising finding: amateur arts activity in a neighborhood correlates with a higher number of patents from high-tech startups.
- When Art Offends: How the Public Thinks About Censorship and Funding Francesco Angelini and Johan Lyrvall analyzed public opinion on a historical dilemma, uncovering how moral and political values shape reactions when publicly funded art sparks outrage.
🌍 ACEI 2025: A Landmark Gathering for Cultural Economists Around the Globe
The 23rd International Conference on Cultural Economics, hosted by Erasmus University Rotterdam from June 24–27, 2025, was a vibrant celebration of knowledge, dialogue, and innovation in the Economics of Cultural Heritage and Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). Drawing participants from over 60 countries, the event underscored the increasing relevance of cultural economics in a world marked by rapid change and uncertainty. More than just a scholarly gathering, ACEI 2025 served as a unique space where academics, policymakers, creatives, and cultural professionals came together to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and imagine new futures.
✨ Most engaged content of 2025
We are pleased to highlight the three blogpost that generated the highest readership this year:
- Trends in concert ticket pricing and consumer preferences by Dylan Thompson
- When art offends: how the public thinks about censorship and funding by Francesco Angelini and Johan Lyrvall
- Opening doors: welcoming people with disabilities in arts centers by by Manuel Cuadrado-García, María-Luisa Palma-Martos, and Juan D. Montoro-Pons
Thank you for being a part of our journey through the economics of culture this year. We look forward to bringing you more cutting-edge research and fascinating insights in the new year!
Which of these topics was your favorite? Or, which one would you like us to explore in more depth in 2026?
We wish you all the best in the New 2026 ! ✨✨
The Editorial Team
Alice, Marie, and Trilce
PS: Have you recently published an article? We warmly invite you to submit an article and contribute to our blog! ETA’s goal is to translate academic research into useful information for the cultural sector. This is an excellent opportunity to explain your findings to a wider audience and present the crucial policy implications of your work. More info at https://culturaleconomics.org/etaguide/
About the image
Rippl Rippl Christmas c. 1910, József Rippl-Rónai, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
