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Study Finds P2P Has No Effect on Legal Music Sales
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.'"
I never believed that P2P would have a significant effect on the sales of records. Let's face it: most of us will simply go out and buy a record if we really want to have it. If we don't really want to have it, we may still pirate it. But we would definitely not go out and hand over a hunk of cash for it. Most of the music that we warez, I believe, would be the music that we wouldn't otherwise buy. Same goes for movies, games, everything.
It's easy for the large publishers to complain and act as though their sales are declining due to the increasing amount of P2P networking, but you might as well say that global warming is the cause. Afterall, neither have ever been proven to have a huge effect on record sales...
Filesharing HAS caused a drop in CD sales.
Because:
A. File sharing has caused RIAA lawsuits
B. RIAA lawsuits have pissed off customers
C. Pissed off customers look for other things to buy instead of CD's.
A->B->C so A->C
On a more serious note.... This reminds me of the global warming debate.. First you have those that say it's happening and those that say it isn't. Then enough studies come out that Global warming happening becomes the prevailing idea. So the next debate is Well, humans are causing it/it's natural. and so forth.
So we've seen the Cd sales are diminishing debate, CD sales ARE going down, now we're looking at why, the debate is File shareing / not file shareing / impact of file shareing.
I will be quite happy when the debate turns to "Your artists are CRAP, CD sales is dropping because the consumer is moving to buy independent artists' work, where they can find decent music."
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
That's the comment I got from various American youths. The music they are interested in has no long term value, unlike the Beatles/Stones/et al. Partly this has to do with the fact that most of modern pop is programmed on a cold computer and utterly devoid of real feeling; I get the feeling that while the kids are diggin' modern music at the same time they are unable to form a true connection to it, in the same way a human can't truly fall in love with a computer, because one knows it's an inanimate object at the end of the day. (And yes, I have read Isaac Asimov's robot story on the subject)
When I listen to music I'm partly looking to be wowed by the performance of at least some part of the piece. Current electronically generated and produced pop has no real performances to speak of, or if there is one can't be sure whether it's a sample of some old record thrown into the mix.
The point to all of this is that people now feel no reason to want to own the tracks they think they like (so that they can be listened to years down the road with fond memories) as music has become as commoditized and disposable as Gillette razors - only meant to be used for a certain period of time before being chucked in the bin.
There's a lot more to the problem of course, but the above does play an important part. The record companies need to produce artists (and they are out there) who produce real music and do it well. Fiddling with MIDI settings all day isn't producing music - it's computer programming.
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
For all the CD's unsold and rotting on the shelves... they are assembly-line crap... like fast food for the masses, it is bland. Pay attention and you will see that a lot of what kids are listening to is... old fogey music! When I was a kid, I would never have listened to my dad's music because ours was so much better. Now, my son and his friends are hitting me up for ACDC, Led Zeppelin and many other old gems... in fact last night I turned him on to... the Cars!
There is some good indie music out there, but the major companies shun it while pushing out their canned pap. This is what is on the shelves rotting (as it should). No wonder their primary source of funds seems to be lawsuits right now.
No wonder the Police have chosen to reunite. The rockers with walkers are making a killing because the industry today is creatively bankrupt. Bring on Jagger, the Stones and their musical wheelchairs.
One possible flaw in the study is that consumers are often not interested in entire albums. If the data is being presented in album units, and most of the download traffic is around popular songs from those albums, that explains some of the discrepancy.
I download a shitload of music and movies. Yet, I buy the music I want. The availability of filesharing has not affected the amount I spend on culture each month. If I bought everything I download, I would probably have to pay some $2000/month.
When you say Everytime a new study come yet the results differs., take a look at the sources. All independent research has always shown that filesharing has not and does not affect record sales. All information that comes from the record companies says that they do. Who do you trust?
c++;
The difference is that the RIAA and other similar industry reps will tell you that it affects sales for the simple reason that they view every download as a lost sale. What they refuse to admit is that in the vast majority of the cases where a song or album is downloaded, it never would have been a sale in the first place because the person wouldn't have ordinarily bought that album or song. By the RIAA's rationale, people would otherwise be spending hundreds of dollars more per year on music, which we all know is just not true. If there was no means for them to have free music, they would just not listen to as much music. What I never understood was why the RIAA thinks that people listening to less music is a good thing, regardless of the reason.
I didn't see any parading, though I did see evidence that it hurts sales by no more than 0.7%. How does openly discussing causal relationships in economics with respect to P2P hurt the credibility of a /., a news website that's centers a discussion about a topic for us to hash about until we set the facts straight?
Really, until you actually RTFA and tell me why they're wrong, I'll stick with the only person who has developed a point so far: TFA.