A review of the productivity literature reveals that there are many different measures of productivity. The choice between the measures depends either on the purpose of the productivity measurement and/or the amount of data that is available (OECD, 2001). In this report, two distinct expressions of productivity enabled by live music making in Australia are identified.

The first is a traditional measure of input productivity. This is the financial return to producers that live music making in Australia generates on the investments of capital, labour, energy, materials and services. It is estimated in the previous section that this was equal to 1.2 billion dollars in 2014, or a return of 12.7 per cent on the 9.7 billion dollars invested in total. To avoid double counting, however, we only report this figure once.

Of more interest is a relatively under-explored and un-quantified benefit: the productivity benefits live music making in Australia deliver to individuals, enabling them to be more effective and efficient in their work. This is the second dimension explored in the following estimation of a productivity premium.