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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.'"
Is this not what people on slashdot have been saying for years!?
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.
My work here is dung.
That means they should give back some of the money they've confiscated in lawsuits over their 'losses'.
As if the world were fair.
I don't know about you, but I like to use P2P to trade pictures of your mother.
Actually that's a lie. I know you do it, too.
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...
Well, we can start with everyone who plays WoW... Some people like getting their favorite free *nix distros via P2P. Just like some pirates like getting their free *dows distro via P2P, except the former is legal.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
If god himself passed down this information on gleaming tablets 20 miles on a side, the RIAA and the MPAA wouldn't believe it for a second. Likewise the reverse; downloaders don't believe that piracy hurts legitimate artists, and they won't no matter what the evidence says.
Frankly, it's obviously somewhere in the middle. I doubt that p2p does much damage to music sales, but it has to have SOME impact...I mean, when I get some stupid pop song stuck in my head and I download it instead of buying it, that's a few bucks that won't go to the damn RIAA, and I have enough disposable cash that I might have bought it, if I had no other option.
On the flip side, I tend to download songs off CDs I already own, so I don't have to get out the sharpie to scribble over the stupid data track, so I can rip it. That's the definition of a no damage situation.
Neither side is ever going to compromise on this; the **AA's are as convinced we're screwing them as we are that they're screwing us. Eventually they'll just wither away and die due to changing distribution models, and that will be the end of that.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The people who base their opinions on available facts have suspected this for years.
Most people prefer supposition and believing what's "obvious" and they will continue to ignore the facts anyway.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
You know what would shift those 74 million unsold CDs? Robot monkeys. A free robot monkey with each CD. Ones wearing little black leather jackets for the rock CDs, pink tutus for girl bands, green hair for punks. You could call them Andy The Happy Robot CD Monkey & His Fab Monkey Pals if you like.
My pleasure.
The music consumer has wised up, and many of us sample music we are interested in on MP3, WMA, whatever, and find out what is good and what sucks BEFORE spending our money. When I find good music, I generally purchase the CD, but I'll be dammed if I am going to part with money for a disk full of B-sides.
Record companies got greedy, when they could have made a fortune selling CDs for 7-10 dollars.
Right fucking NOW, some stupid record exec is reading the report, and in his mind, sees it as another opportunity to RAISE prices.
Fuck um.
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?
Thus, 74 million unsold CDs from that year are 'without an excuse for sitting on shelves.
You mean besides the non-music industry perception that they contain music people are not really interested in or are at a price people are not willing to pay?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Not much.
I was never a huge music buyer or listener really, mostly I just relied on friends music collections to carry me through. Though I understand how some folks get completely wrapped up in their music collections, for me it was mainly background noise to what I was really focusing on. As such, a 1/2 decent radio station would suffice when no friends with massive music collections were around.
Since the p2p downloading craze and the direct download craze that led up to it...though my music collection itself has increased quite a bit, my buying patterns are about the same. Essentially, I have my own personal perfect radio station.
Conversely, I do directly attribute P2P with significantly increasing my spending in one area: live concerts.
Though my effort/money put toward accruing music hasn't changed at all, my exposure to music has vastly increased with the ease of "collection" that p2p has brought. I've always loved a live show, so much so that it probably explains my aversion to recorded music. I love the little flaws in a live performance that gives the music a personality that is often stripped away by significant remastering at the recording studio.
Since a show costs anywere from 10-60 dollars and I'm going to more then ever and in genres I never considered before.....I'd say the music industry is profiting form me more then ever.
Thus, 74 million unsold CDs from that year are 'without an excuse for sitting on shelves.
That's the excuse. Sorry, people are buying less CDs because so many of the new CDs pushed by major labels are cookie-cutter copies of other CD's that sold well. Maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age, but all the music *does* sound the same to me.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
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.
Their record sales plummeted because the music they're selling sucks. And because the music sold before is now available in much greater amounts, whether on "classic" (rock/R&B/80s/oldies) radio, much less destructible (than vinyl/tape) CDs, and even downloads that don't get lost as much.
The music biz used to be mainly in the business of finding artists coming from the mass of people, trying them out before "focus groups" (live audiences) who selected themselves from the cultural word of mouth, and cultivating them for a decade or more. The artists getting the most continuing investment were those most successful in either a live audience, or record sales even in a regionally highly varied market, feeding back with radio play. A natural coevolution of the artists and the audience, when mediated best by the music biz people engaged into both.
Now the biz thinks it's smarter than the market. Creating fake "artitst" who are really just spokesmodels in videos for a recorded product tied in with cobranded products like so much anime breakfast cereal. The model is to create as many products that can be most controlled as possible, within a narrow range of those styles best "understood" by the marketers, pushing more money than brains through the network of middleman connections, and maximizing the profit from anything that looks like it's "hitting". Meanwhile, these "smarter than the market" marketers are dumber than ever before, especially about music and the mass of people in the market, because the smarter ones have already fled the sinking ship a decade ago.
It's like the factory farms that breed mad cow. No wonder the music sounds like a soundtrack to the cows' death dance.
--
make install -not war
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.
Well here's a question: was the music industry losing sales at a rate that doesn't correlate to the growth of p2p before p2p became popular? Your rant doesn't answer that question.
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++;
If I like a song enough to want a local copy of it, my first step is to check iTunes. Usually I find the song (recent example: Yell Fire by Michael Franti) and its associated album. If I like the other songs enough, I buy the whole thing, otherwise just the one. However...
If the song is NOT on iTunes (recent example: Justified & Ancient by Tammy & the KLF), I click the icon I keep right next to iTunes... Poisoned. It's exceedingly rare not to find exactly what I want on P2P. As far as I'm concerned, I made a good faith effort to pay for it, and my conscience is clear.
Apparently what the RIAA fears from piracy is not direct losses. They've been shamelessly inflating those numbers for years. What they fear is that piracy allows users a greater preview, which makes them smarter, which makes them less likely to buy the crap that's on the shelves.
Back when I was a kid, the way I "found" new bands was to go to the CD store and randomly buy something. Either that, or the radio. Nowadays I'd be ashamed to buy music sight-unseen (that is, unheard) but it used to be normal behavior.
I think one issue everyone's missing is the availability of non-mainstream music to almost anyone with an internet connection. Between Myspace, Wikipedia, affordable broadband, and the increasing hunger for new and exciting things, kids and young adults are finding increasingly numerous places to discover and enjoy music in amounts that they wouldn't have been able to find ten years ago. A lot of what we're seeing is the spreading out of disposable income, and the only people who are pissed about that are the ones who hold the rights to the mass-produced, lowest common denominater type drivel that MTV touts. If anything, we're giving more money and exposure to artists than ever before.
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 buy about 16 or so CD's a year. Generally 4 batches of 4 or so. But I have to order them online from Europe (psyshop.com in Germany - great folks run it!), since no stores in Canada sell anything from the labels I buy. Now that's not 100% true, there is a couple of artists I listen to (Delerium, Conjure One) that are actually Canadian, and another artist (Toby Marks ala Banco De Gaia) who has distribution here (though I now buy CD's directly from him, get them sooner than waiting for the release).
I pretty much stopped buying the drivel put out my the major labels in the early 90's, stopped listening to the radio (di.fm FTW!), and most of the concerts I go to are old bands coming back for the umpteenth time - though I did see Coldplay's 2nd tour which was darn good!
To my mind the music *business* has turned into just that - a machine designed to reap the greatest money from the consumer for the least amount of effort/talent/artistry. There are tons of fantastic artists out there, but the vast majority of them record on little tiny labels (twisted.co.uk, ultimae.com are two that I consider noteworthy).
I admit to doing a bit of Nabstering in my day, but honestly all I was looking for were extended mixes of 80's tunes that are not available anywhere. I would not even consider pirating/downloading any of the music I listen to all the time if I can buy it on CD.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
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.
The problem with this study is that it's based on scientific criteria. The RIAA doesn't need science, they won't let reality fool them. They create their own parallel reality first and then base all their assumptions on that. More or less like what TV pundits do.
The music biz used to be mainly in the business of finding artists coming from the mass of people, trying them out before "focus groups" (live audiences) who selected themselves from the cultural word of mouth, and cultivating them for a decade or more. The artists getting the most continuing investment were those most successful in either a live audience, or record sales even in a regionally highly varied market, feeding back with radio play. A natural coevolution of the artists and the audience, when mediated best by the music biz people engaged into both.
I viscerally want to agree with you on this point, but I'm left wondering - if this is the model for success why isn't it being exploited by entrepreneurs in a capitalistic society? The RIAA labels should go out of business quickly, leaving those following the path to profit as the new kings.
But that's not happening.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
One might even say that some people think that P2P affects sales, while other people think it effects sales.
"To suggest this to be true is no different than saying P2P doesn't exist."
I dunno about that. One suggestion is that people are getting music, but they still spend money on it. They could use P2P to discover what they want to get, then go get it. Sounds counter intuitive, but you've got to consider that there's always new music coming out. For example, I discovered the Chemical Brothers through 'piracy'. When they released a new album, I just went out and bought it. I was excited about getting it. Etc.
That may or may not convince you, that's cool, I understand. Afterall, I'm only giving you anecdotal evidence. I just know that I've spent MORE money since I've had the ability to acquire music/movies on the net than I did before. Sites like YouTube, for example, have kept me interested in entertainment. P2P may get people content for free, but it also keeps their interest alive. I can picture that balancing out. Ask yourself this question: Do you know anybody who exclusively gets content from P2P but never purchases movies or music? Personally, I don't, but I'll concede I'm only a sample of one.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That's mostly true. Except that Fabian and the girl groups were themselves real musicians, if only "modestly talented", who survived the evolutionary pool of "the streets" to get "discovered" (and then promoted, as you say). And then developed - they all were cultivated for years, especially if they had any success, even regional, especially live. And their success was based on their music, even if it was pablum supporting their "image" in teenybopper magazines. Not how photogenic they were on video, even counting "Top 40" TV like American Bandstand, which was just a turning point.
That changed some in the 1960s, as TV featured more music. But the total amount of TV "bandwidth" was too small to do more than influence the industry, and form a small ghetto of purely TV stars posing as musicians.
Of course the 1980s changed everything. The record companies were not just a cartel, but owned by very large corporations, typically conglomerates, for synergy. They harnessed 24x7 MTV and a few others to market products with video content more than radio had ever achieved. And they controlled the content to make it safe, harnessing the social/political effects of the music for commerce, rather than the "revolution" (mostly dating preferences) of the previous 30-40 years.
Disco, Punk, AOR, Grunge and so many other "genres" were created as market segments by the corporations, largely structured by video TV viewership. The only real monkey wrench was rap, which was so cheap to make (trashcan turntables instead of even guitars) and distribute through a new medium of tape: boomboxes and walkmans. By the 1990s record corps had figured out rap audiences, too, so that's corporate and harmless.
But music is eternal. It's a fundamental way for people to express ourselves, to ourselves and to each other. It's a compulsion for many people to make, regardless of (and, owing to the defects underlying compulsive psychology, often despite) profitability, subsistence or any other rational constraint. Unfortunately, bad music is pretty persistent. But I hope that the decentralized distribution of networks means more people will hear more people like themselves (in at least some sympathetic way) doing it, and more people will be inspired to do it. Which is all that never changes in music, and where the good stuff comes from.
--
make install -not war
Because the RIAA isn't about music. It's about money.
Artists hate dealing with business. Businesspeople know this, so they'll gladly flock to the "aid" of artists, telling them, "You just go and be artistic. We'll handle the business end for you." The trouble is that this lack of business savvy on the part of the artists attracts the bottom of the business barrel, the least scrupulous, most ambitious, laziest get-rich-quick bastards ever to earn an MBA.
They don't give two shits if you listen to music. They just want you to buy it, for as much as possible, as many times as possible.
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
I've done exactly that a few times. Often, if I like one song, I'll download a few others from the cd. If I like what I hear, I'll buy the CD. I guess this buying trend is being completely ignored by MPAA.
Anyhow, the market has changed, yet the recording industry hasn't. If they don't get their act together, they'll either find themselves without a job, or they'll end up causing a war with all their legal propaganda crap.
He had accidentally set chmod 511 /earth instead of chmod 711 /earth and had to include the ! to override the write permissions on the planet.
The other study Finds Stealing Has No Effect on Wealth of the Riches.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
gotcha....i assumed that he had, well, "god" rights.
but i suppose those rights would allow him to create such a situation.....
could god create a file so locked down that even he couldn't modify it? will now replace the "large rock" zen question.
no i have not shot my gun in the air and gone 'Ahh!'
And you seem to buy into the RIAA fascists' doctrine that the creators have some kind of God-given Right to profit from their so-called "IP." Here's a news flash: they don't. Copyright only exists "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts," yet it has mutated into an abomination that hinders that progress instead. Therefore, it should be abolished with prejudice.
Perhaps what's immoral is upholding copyright, not violating it!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"We wouldn't have to put up with DRM if it weren't for pirates"
I'm not so sure. CD's are lacking any sort of copy protection or DRM, as were LPs before them.
The legislation to support DRM was put in place primarily with the DMCA which predates any sort of file sharing on a large scale. My guess is DRM was put in place primarily because of the *fear* of unauthorized file sharing, not from any losses.
But even if what you're saying is true, what do you propose? If people didn't commit crimes, we wouldn't need the police. If people at healthy, our health care costs would be lower. If people paid more attention on the roads we wouldn't need all those safety features in cars, etc etc.
But none of those things are true. The record companies can go one of two ways.... they either tighten down restriction on copying even more, or they remove it, lower prices, and go for higher volumes; at least change what they're doing somehow. It will be interesting to see what path they go down and if they fail or succeed.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you