Study Finds P2P Has No Effect on Legal Music Sales 294
MBrichacek writes "The Journal of Political Economy is running the results of a study into P2P file-sharing, reports Ars Technica. The study has found that, contrary to the claims of the recording industry, there is almost no effect on sales from file-sharing. Using data from several months in 2002, the researchers came to the conclusion that P2P 'affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.' 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, according to the study, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. While the RIAA has been blaming that drop (and the drop in subsequent years) on piracy, given the volume of file-sharing that year the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total. Thus, 74 million unsold CDs from that year are 'without an excuse for sitting on shelves.'"
The Original Report (Score:5, Informative)
Something interesting to note is that this paper is dated March of 2004 (not too new as Ars Technica reported) and it causes me great wonder why I've never come upon this before (or why it's never been cited in the news). I recall reading tons of reports from one of the Associations where piracy is proven to hurt record sales but several years after this one is published, I finally see it.
For those of you interested in the data, pages 34 on contain some very interesting data whereby downloads are broken down by song, album, country & genre (in case everyone was trying to pin illegal downloads on those damned teeny boppers).
For those of you who wish to question the sample size, see Section B. "File Sharing Data and Album Sample" of the paper. You will also be interested in reading Appendix A in which they call into question their own sample sizes and weigh in on how accurate they might or might not be. To quote the paper for some more detail on the downloads samples, To quote the paper on album sales samples, Don't kid yourself, this is a difficult study to do. Both the downloads and album sales must be sampled and modeled correctly to draw correct conclusions. In the end, it would be hard to verify/discredit any studies done on this topic since A) consumers are human and therefore erradic & B) macro economics still isn't well understood.
Now, for those of you who just want the bottom line at the end of the paper, And, from the very end of the paper, Yeah, that's right, the research concluded that "file sharing probably increases aggregate welfare." I'll bet if we all got drills & augers, we could get that into the brains of the people running the RIAA & MPAA.
Re:Where is the study on how much CDs suck? (Score:2, Informative)
But if the RIAA would get their heads out of their ass and realize that the majority of the population doesn't want to hear the crap they put out they might turn things around. First off they're marketing to the wrong bunch. They're marketing to the decling population of teens to twenties. This worked in the 60s and 70s when the baby boomers were that age. Then they dropped them for the younger market. I would argue that most boomers are unlikely to download warez, would gladly purchase some music they'd like to hear and have the disposable income to do so. Just look at the sales of a release of Beatles No. Ones a few years back. And (get ready for the "old foggie" comment) it doesn't have to be old groups, but groups that can sing, not lipsync for for MTV. (Have you ever thought about how many former #1 selling artists would never have made it on American Idol today because they weren't good looking enough!?) Everything today is either rap or Beyonce. I would really like to find some new artists that I can like consistently, but they're few and far between.
Re:Exactly (Score:2, Informative)