Reaching high levels of artistic creation in a society requires institutions that facilitate the sorting of the most talented individuals of each generation and the development of their skills across artistic careers. This working paper takes a professional career approach to analyzing how copyright regulation affects artistic creation.

It builds an overlapping-generations model of artists in which the number and average talent of senior artists in each period is linked to the number of young artists in previous periods. Long copyrights increase superstar market concentration and can reduce the number of young artists who are able to pursue artistic careers.

As a result, in the long run, excessively long copyrights can reduce artistic creation, the average talent of artists, and social welfare.