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Concurrent with the MIDEM music business conference in France today, the Computer & Communications Industry Association released a study it commissioned, “The Sky is Rising,” by Mike Masnick, who writes about technology policy for Techdirt and is founder and CEO of Floor 64. The economic report on entertainment over the past decade found that the entertainment industry grew 50 percent while consumer spending on entertainment also increased.

Some findings:

·       Using numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the study charts how consumer spending on entertainment as a percentage of their household income rose 15 percent from 2000 to 2008.

·       BLS data also show entertainment sector employment also grew 20 percent during that last decade and 43 percent for those identified as independent artists.

·       According to MPAA, box office revenues grew 25 percent from 2006 to 2010 from $25.5 billion to $31.8 billion.

·       Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers and iDATE show that from 1998-2010 the value of the worldwide entertainment industry grew from $449 billion to $745 billion.

·       From 1999 to 2009 music concert sales in the US tripled from $1.5 billion to $4.6 billion

·       Consumers’ choices growing as more movies are produced jumping from 5,635 films produced globally in 2005 to 7,193 in 2009.

“By any measure, it appears that we are living in a true Renaissance era for content. More money is being spent overall. Households are spending more on entertainment. And a lot more works are being created,” wrote Masnick in his report.

CCIA President & CEO Ed Black said having numbers like this to illustrate the state of the market for the entertainment industry helps when crafting policies based on complaints from the entertainment industry about their profits and whether the Internet is helping with new distribution models or killing the industry.

“The numbers paint a quite a contrast from the vision of doom and gloom the entertainment industry has pointed to lately. Having a more clear picture of the economic successes and challenges of the content industry will help lawmakers around the world as they consider policies like increased copyright enforcement. We can hope future proposals will be more proportional to the scope of the problem and not designed to subtract from one industry’s bottom line to potentially add to another industry’s profits. Statistics like this report could help everyone better determine both what types of policies are actually needed and what approach is likely to be effective,” said CCIA President & CEO Ed Black.