The Anatomy of the Culture Economy

When we look at businesses in art and culture, we keep coming back to a basic question: what is the customer actually paying for? The same song can offer a feeling on a streaming service, the chance to be there at a concert, something to own on vinyl, a connection with other fans or with the artist, and a way to mark an important moment at a wedding. Each is a different reason to value the music, and each can become a different reason to pay for it.

We usually discuss these businesses by industry: music, film, fashion, publishing, games and so on. Industry tells us a good deal about how culture is made, but much less about why people participate in it. We argue that understanding cultural businesses requires looking at the forms they produce alongside the reasons people take part. What follows is a working map built on that view, which we hope will help people who work in these fields see their own businesses, and their alternatives, more clearly.

The cultural industries

A jacket keeps someone warm and a song fills a quiet room, but people also use such things to feel something, to show who they are, to be close to others and to make sense of their lives. In this series, the culture economy means the ways in which people get value from works, objects, experiences and cultural practices, and the ways in which that value enters exchange. To describe the forms it takes, we start from the classifications used by statisticians and policymakers, among them UNESCO’s Framework for Cultural Statistics and the creative-industries definitions of Britain’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We adapt them into a working list of sixteen industries. The appendix explains how the list corresponds to those frameworks and where we draw the line in industries that are only partly cultural.

Our working list

Fine art and the art market
Fashion and design goods
Advertising and creative services
Performing arts
Music
Film, television and video
Games, animation and comics
Publishing and writing
Online creators
Collectibles and character IP
Crafts and intangible heritage
Museums and heritage
Belief, spirituality and self-knowledge
Cultural tourism and festivals
Food culture
Sport culture

A list like this describes what is produced. It does not tell us when two products in the same industry meet different demands, or when products from different industries meet the same one.

In its letter to shareholders in January 2019, Netflix wrote that it competed with, and lost to, the video game Fortnite more than it did with HBO. This is why we need a second classification that starts from the person who takes part in culture and the reasons they do so, rather than from what is made.

Five drives behind cultural participation

We propose five drives, each defined by the question people are answering when they take part or pay (Table 1). Several drives can meet in one purchase, and different people can come to the same product for different ones. A drive is a reason to value or seek culture, although what people actually choose also depends on what is available, affordable and expected of them.

Table 1. Five drives behind cultural participation

The drive	The question it answers
Experience	What do I want to enjoy or live through?
Possession	What do I want to own and keep?
Self-identity	How does it express, or help me understand, who I am?
Connection	Who does it connect me with?
Meaning	How does it help me make sense of my life, or grow?

Experience

Much of what people buy from culture is an experience, such as hearing a song, reading a novel, playing a game, sitting in a theatre or eating a carefully prepared meal. The value lies in what it is like while it lasts, whether the response is emotional, sensory, intellectual or physical. We count beauty as part of it, because the pleasure of a well-proportioned room is first of all something people feel.

One useful business distinction is between access to a reproducible work and participation in a particular event. A recording can be sold one copy at a time or through a subscription to a catalogue. A live event happens in one place at one time and is usually sold through a ticket. Owning the recording does not replace hearing the artist perform.

Possession

For some buyers, having the object is part of the point. They want something they can keep, display, use, lend or one day pass on. An original painting, a first edition, a handbag from a heritage house or a figure from a sought-after series is valued partly because it is that object and no other.

Luminate reported in 2023 that only half of the Americans who had bought a vinyl record in the previous year said they owned a record player. Some of those records were probably gifts or bought ahead of a turntable, but the figure still suggests that many are bought to keep and display rather than only to play. That helps explain why vinyl still sells alongside streaming. Scarcity and resale matter in some of these purchases. Many of the things people keep, however, are plentiful and inexpensive and matter mainly to their owners, like a handmade bowl that becomes familiar through daily use.

Self-identity

People use culture to say who they are and how they would like to be seen. Clothing is the most visible example, and taste in music, books and collections works in a similar way, as Pierre Bourdieu showed in his study of how taste marks social position. The value of such choices depends on who can read them. Some are meant to be recognized widely, while others, like the unbranded clothes sold as quiet luxury, are meant to be recognized only by people who share the same references.

Self-identity also has a private side, in which a choice matters for what it reveals to the person who makes it. A novel can give someone words for an experience they had never been able to describe, and a personality test or an astrological reading can offer a vocabulary for thinking about character. Pew Research found that 30 per cent of American adults consult astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers at least once a year. About two in three of them say they do it mainly for fun and one in three because they believe it gives them helpful insights, so the same practice can be entertainment for some people and a source of insight for others.

Connection

People pay for relationships as well as for content. Fans gather around an artist, readers discuss the same book and supporters recognize one another through shared references, and in each case the relationship runs toward a group. Someone may also go to an exhibition because a friend invited them, or hear an artist because a parent bought the tickets. The person who suggests the visit, the person who pays and the person who takes part need not be the same, and a business may have to win over all three.

Other attachments are to a particular person, such as a singer, a writer or a designer whom people follow from one project to the next because they recognize a sensibility they share. They usually do not expect to be known in return, and they keep buying the work partly because they want it to continue. In 1956 Donald Horton and Richard Wohl called one form of this attachment a para-social relationship, meaning a sense of intimacy with someone the audience has never met.

Some products sell that closeness directly, through a signed edition, a meet-and-greet, a paid message from an idol or a tip sent to a streamer during a live broadcast. In both kinds of attachment, spending is concentrated among the most committed. In 2023 Luminate counted about one in five American music listeners as superfans and found that they spent around 80 per cent more on music each month than the average listener.

Meaning

Some culture helps people make sense of their lives, offering ways to approach uncertainty, responsibility, loss and hope, and to ask what matters and how to live. Literature and philosophy have always done this, and so have religious traditions and spiritual practices. People who look for meaning tend to seek a source they trust, whether a text, a teacher or a tradition. For a business that offers guidance, credibility is part of the product.

Meaning can also come through practice, as when people spend money and years learning an instrument, practising calligraphy or studying a tradition. For them the value lies in their growing ability and in a sense of progress toward the person they want to become. This route asks the buyer to do much of the work, so a business that serves it sells guidance and feedback as much as material. Meaning and self-identity often meet, but they ask different questions. Self-identity asks who I am, while meaning asks what matters and what I am working toward.

Mapping drives across industries

Figure 1 brings the two classifications together, setting the sixteen industries against the five drives with one example of how each drive can show up. The examples include culture that people make themselves as well as culture they watch, read or buy. Someone who sings in a choir, takes a dance class or writes fan fiction is looking less for a finished work than for the tools, teaching, places and occasions that let them make their own. The examples are illustrations rather than fixed characteristics of an industry, and an empty cell means only that we chose not to give one.

Figure 1. A working map of the culture economy

Industry	Experience	Possession	Self-identity	Connection	Meaning
Fine art and the art market	A photograph or a painting seen in person	A print or an original of one’s own	The art someone chooses to live with	An opening night at a gallery	Lessons in drawing or painting
Fashion and design goods	The feel of good cloth and cut	A bag or a chair kept for years	Clothes that say who one is	A designer followed from season to season	A ring that marks a promise
Advertising and creative services	A campaign people enjoy watching			An advert everyone is talking about
Performing arts	A night at the theatre	A programme kept after the show		The regulars at a local theatre	A dance or acting class
Music	A playlist for a mood, or a concert	A record bought after a show	One’s year in music, shared online	A fan community around an artist	Years spent learning an instrument
Film, television and video	A series watched over a weekend	A collector’s edition on disc	Favourite films listed for others to see	Talking over last night’s episode
Games, animation and comics	A game that absorbs a whole evening	In-game skins, or a shelf of manga	An avatar, or cosplay	A guild or a regular squad	Mastering a difficult game
Publishing and writing	A novel read in one sitting	A first edition	A novel that puts one’s own life into words	A book club	A book that helps after a loss
Online creators	A creator watched every day	Merchandise from a favourite creator	The accounts one follows	A tip sent during a live stream	A craft learned from a creator’s videos
Collectibles and character IP	The moment a blind box opens	Figures collected and displayed	A character hung from a bag	Trading with other collectors
Crafts and intangible heritage	A visit to a maker’s workshop	A handmade bowl used every day	Traditional dress from one’s own region	Buying from a maker one knows	Learning or carrying on a tradition
Museums and heritage	A walk through a historic site	Something from the museum shop		A members’ evening at a museum	A family’s history traced in an archive
Belief, spirituality and self-knowledge	The calm of a temple or a retreat	Prayer beads or a talisman kept close	A personality test or a birth chart	A congregation, or a trusted teacher	Guidance for a life decision, or daily prayer
Cultural tourism and festivals	A weekend at a festival	A souvenir brought home	Places one has been, shown to others	The crowd at a festival	A trip to where one’s family came from
Food culture	A tasting menu		A dish from one’s hometown	A shared meal	Learning the tea ceremony
Sport culture	A tight match, watched in the stadium	A signed ball, or a ticket kept from a final	The club’s shirt, worn on match day	Fellow supporters, or a favourite player	Years of training in a martial art

Read together, the two classifications show what neither shows on its own.

Read across, a row shows that one industry can serve several drives. A museum may offer a walk through its galleries, objects from its shop, events for its members and the use of its archive. Each of these can be run as a separate line of business. A single industry, and often a single work, can meet quite different demands, so products that look alike do not necessarily compete.

Read down, a column shows that one drive can be met in many forms. Someone looking for company might join a fan community, a book club or a guild, although no industry classification would put them side by side. Products in the same column can compete across industries, as Netflix found its series competing with a game for viewers’ time. The map suggests where such rivals may be, although whether people really choose between two products depends on what they give up for one of them.

Some connections run across the columns. A novel can lead someone to its television adaptation, and the adaptation can bring them into a fan community. Many partnerships between cultural businesses, from adaptations to collaborations, follow paths of this kind.

What makes culture hard to replace

Two products that answer the same drive are still not interchangeable. The drives tell us what people are looking for, but not why they find it in one particular club, artist or object rather than another. That usually depends on things outside the product itself, such as where it came from, the occasion it marks, the person who gave it and whether others recognize what it means. A family photograph that would fetch almost nothing on the market can be irreplaceable to its owner for exactly these reasons. When these circumstances attach to something a business provides, such as an artist, a club or a series, they are the part of its value that a competitor finds hardest to copy. When they attach instead to the owner’s own memories, as with the photograph, they do not by themselves give a seller any advantage.

Occasion matters too, as with a box of mooncakes given at the Mid-Autumn Festival. A better-tasting pastry would not serve as well, because the gift has to fit the occasion and the family who receive it. Spending of this kind follows the calendar, and it tends to feel like something one ought to do rather than something one might choose.

Serving several drives can give people more reasons to stay, although the number of drives alone does not explain their attachment. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour offered the experience of the music in a stadium. It also offered self-identity, in the costumes fans chose for each “era”, and connection, both among fans who made and traded friendship bracelets and toward the artist herself. Another stadium concert could offer all three, but not this artist or the years fans had spent with her music.

Drives can build up over time. Someone who first goes to a concert because a friend has a spare ticket may come back for the music, and later for the people they have met there. The reason a customer arrives is often not the reason they stay, so judging a relationship by the first purchase can miss what keeps people coming back.

Combining drives helps only when they support one another, and they can pull apart when different people come for different ones. A football stadium on match day holds people who came for the game, families on a day out and supporters who have followed the club for decades. A quieter and more comfortable stand may suit some of them while taking away the intensity that brings others to the ground. In the same way, wider distribution can help newcomers discover a collectible while weakening its appeal to buyers who valued its rarity.

The same circumstances make cultural value hard to read from prices. A Labubu figure or a Birkin bag can sell for many times the price of a functional equivalent. The gap may reflect what the object means, but it may also reflect workmanship, scarcity or the hope of resale. Separating these is one of the questions for Measuring the Culture Economy, the third essay in this series.

Beyond the industry label

Industry explains how culture is made and brought to market, but the reasons people take part cut across industries. To understand a cultural business, we need both the industry it works in and the drives and settings that bring people to it. The song we began with is one product and several businesses at once. Along the way it meets products from other industries, as an alternative to some and a companion to others. Figure 1 is a first attempt to show where those drives appear, and we expect to revise it as we test it against real businesses.

Participation is only half of the picture. The artists, companies and institutions that create cultural products also want something from them, and the value those products create often ends up with someone other than the participant, such as an advertiser. The next essay takes up these questions, and the third proposes ways to measure both.

Questions we keep coming back to

Do people come to a product for the work, the object, the occasion or the person behind it, and how might that change?
Which settings and combinations make it matter more?
What do people treat as its alternatives or companions, inside its industry and outside it?
What would they lose by choosing an alternative instead?

Read next

How the Culture Economy Works (forthcoming): why the culture economy behaves differently from ordinary markets, and who captures the value it creates.
Measuring the Culture Economy (forthcoming): a short set of indicators that apply across cultural products.

Appendix

A1. How our list relates to existing frameworks

Most attempts to measure culture start by dividing it into industries. UNESCO’s Framework for Cultural Statistics, revised in 2025, sorts what it calls the cultural and creative ecosystem into seven cultural domains, among them heritage, performing arts, books and press, audiovisual and music. It adds seven transversal domains, such as festivals, interactive media and cultural tourism, so that countries can compare their figures. Britain’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport has defined the creative industries since 1998 by their reliance on individual creativity and intellectual property. David Throsby’s concentric circles rank industries by how much cultural content they produce, and the World Intellectual Property Organization groups them by how much they depend on copyright. Each was built to count, fund or protect culture, and each shows in which field an activity takes place and who produces it.

We add five industries that these frameworks cover only in part or not at all: online creators; collectibles and character IP; belief, spirituality and self-knowledge; food culture; and sport culture. Architecture, which the DCMS counts as a subsector of its own, sits within creative services. The DCMS’s own figures include IT, software and computer services, which accounted for about 43 per cent of the £145.8bn of value it counted in the creative industries in 2024. Our list keeps games but leaves general-purpose software outside its scope, because most software is a tool rather than a cultural work. This essay also sets aside news reporting, which both UNESCO and the DCMS count under press and broadcasting, and keeps the parts of publishing that readers value mainly as works.

The UNESCO column below gives the closest of the 2025 framework’s cultural domains (a to g) and, where relevant, its transversal domains. The correspondence is our own reading rather than a classification published by UNESCO.

Our industry	Typical forms and activities	Closest UNESCO FCS 2025 domain	DCMS creative industries subsector	Note
Fine art and the art market	Artists, galleries, auctions, art fairs, art photography	c. Visual arts and crafts	Music, performing and visual arts
Fashion and design goods	Clothing, accessories, jewellery, furniture and homeware	f. Design	Design: product, graphic and fashion design
Advertising and creative services	Campaigns, brand communication, creative agencies, graphic, interior and architectural design, commercial photography	f. Design	Advertising and marketing; architecture; design	Mainly commissioned
Performing arts	Theatre, dance, opera, orchestras	b. Performing arts	Music, performing and visual arts
Music	Recorded music, music publishing, live music	g. Music	Music, performing and visual arts
Film, television and video	Films, series, broadcast and online video	e. Audiovisual	Film, TV, video, radio and photography	News broadcasting set aside
Games, animation and comics	Console, PC and mobile games, anime, manga	e. Audiovisual; d. Books and press (comics); interactive media (transversal)	IT, software and computer services (games only)
Publishing and writing	Books, magazines, web fiction, newsletters, criticism	d. Books and press	Publishing	News reporting set aside
Online creators	Video creators, livestreamers, podcasters	Partly e. Audiovisual	—	Added
Collectibles and character IP	Designer toys, trading cards, licensed characters	Partly c. Visual arts and crafts	—	Added
Crafts and intangible heritage	Handmade goods, traditional techniques	c. Visual arts and crafts; a. Cultural and natural heritage	Crafts
Museums and heritage	Museums, heritage sites, archives	a. Cultural and natural heritage	Museums, galleries and libraries
Belief, spirituality and self-knowledge	Religious goods and pilgrimage, astrology, meditation, personality tests	Partly a. Cultural and natural heritage (intangible heritage)	—	Added
Cultural tourism and festivals	Cultural travel, festivals, biennales	Cultural tourism; festivals (both transversal)	—
Food culture	Culinary heritage, festival foods, tea culture, dining out, food travel	Partly a. Cultural and natural heritage; cultural tourism (transversal)	—	Added
Sport culture	Watching and following sport, clubs and their supporters, fan merchandise	—	—	Added
Not included	General software, IT services, general information platforms, news reporting	—	IT, software and computer services

A2. Where we draw the line

Several of these industries are cultural only in part. In each we count what people take part in for one of the five drives, not everything they spend on the underlying goods and services. Clothing bought for warmth, food bought simply to eat and exercise taken for health therefore fall outside the list.

Food culture. A meal can carry local tradition, family memory or ritual, whether it is everyday or expensive, and UNESCO lists several culinary traditions as intangible heritage. We count that part, not all spending on food.
Sport culture. Watching and following sport offers experience, self-identity and connection, and some people find meaning in a sport they practise. We count these, not fitness bought for health or betting.
Belief, spirituality and self-knowledge. We count practices that people take part in through symbols, traditions or systems of interpretation, such as religious practice, astrology, meditation and personality tests. Clinical psychology, therapy and career counselling are professional services and fall outside the list, although the line between the two is not always sharp.
Advertising and creative services. This work is mostly commissioned by clients who want to sell or communicate something. The map describes how audiences take part in the result, not why the client pays for it.
Architecture. Designing a building is counted within creative services. Buildings experienced as culture, as landmarks or as places people travel to see, appear under museums and heritage or under cultural tourism. Construction is left out.
Platforms. Platforms built around cultural content, such as YouTube, TikTok and Spotify, are counted within the industry whose content they carry. General information platforms, such as search engines and messaging apps, are left out, like general software.
News. This essay sets news reporting aside. Criticism, essays and magazines are kept within publishing, and where a publication mixes the two we count the part that readers value as writing.

A3. Method

The five drives are an organizing framework developed from observed behaviour, not a statistical classification, and they are a starting point rather than a complete list. The industries and the drives both overlap, so neither should be used to add up market sizes or to infer trends. Possession in particular often serves another drive, as when an object is kept for the person it recalls, although for many collectors owning the thing is the aim in itself. The idea that products whose drives reinforce one another are harder to replace is a hypothesis; testing it would need evidence about purchasing, continued participation and the alternatives people consider. A buyer may struggle to explain a purchase, and the reason they give may capture only part of it. We treat these categories as questions to investigate through conversations and behaviour, not as labels to assign from a distance. Survey findings are cited with their dates and illustrate how people behave; they are not measurements of how large each drive is. Figures are as published by October 2026.

The drives draw on a long line of consumer research. Morris Holbrook and Elizabeth Hirschman argued in 1982 that consumption is also a matter of fantasies, feelings and fun, which corresponds to experience. Russell Belk showed in 1988 that possessions become part of the owner’s sense of self, which joins possession to self-identity. Douglas Holt’s 1995 study of baseball spectators described consuming as experience, as integration, as classification and as play, a typology that overlaps with ours in several places. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore’s experience economy (1998) treats experiences as an offering in their own right, and Henry Jenkins’s work on participatory culture (2006) describes audiences who make as well as receive. The industry list, for its part, adapts existing frameworks. What we add is the use of the drives as a second axis set against the industries, to show where a cultural product’s alternatives and companions may lie.

A4. How to cite

JFS Insights, “The Anatomy of the Culture Economy”, October 2026, https://jfscorporate.com/insights/the-anatomy-of-the-culture-economy/. Tables and figures are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence: you may reuse them with attribution to JFS Insights and a link to this article.

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