Does File-Sharing Really Hurt the Music Biz?

Phonographic Memory writes "A new study has come out that purports to show a link between file-sharing and decreased CD purchases. Covering the period of 1995-2003, the study looked for a link between owning a computer and decreased CD purchases. The researcher found that 'some US music consumers could have decreased their CD purchases (prior to 2004) by about 13 percent due to Internet file sharing.' In its coverage of the study, Ars Technica notes that the scholarly consensus on the possibility of a link between file sharing and music purchases is missing: 'the dominant impression gained from reading these studies is that finding accurate correlations between file-sharing and loss of revenue for the music industry is tremendously difficult.'"

Comments

Typical Slashdot

[keyrat rafa]

"...the dominant impression gained from reading these studies is that finding accurate correlations between file-sharing and loss of revenue for the music industry is tremendously difficult.

How conveniant for us! The first part made me feel a bit guilty, but that last line let's me justify it no problem!

Re:What about : increased suckage ==decreased sale

[Web Goddess]

Pah to the so-called suckage factor. When we are young, we are into music, we listen to it fanatically over and over, sing the songs with heart, and buy the CD's to blast in our cars. When we are, ahem, no so young, we simply listen to what we grew up with, and stop buying CD's. ABBA? Foreigner? C'mon, there is rampant suckage even in your CD collection. Suckage is an invention of the jaded elderly, to dis' the new music.

-Wendy

Re:Economics 101

[shark72]

"economies of scale, fuckwit."

Partially correct on the Econ 101 (making you in the minority around here); big failure on the reading for comprehension. Sorry you're having a bad day.