Text 16023, 54 rader
Skriven 2007-02-13 14:53:28 av Ad (1:379/45)
Ärende: P2P no effect on CD sales...
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From: Ad <Dobbin@theStablesCloseToTheAirport.com>

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html

"A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and
Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable
effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis,"
the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music
sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and
album sales. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers
estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.

The study compared the logs of two OpenNAP P2P servers with sales data from
Nielsen SoundScan, tracking the effects of 1.75 million songs downloads on 680
different albums sold during that same period. The study then took a surprising
twist. Popular music will often have both high downloads and high sales
figures, so what the researchers wanted was a way to test for effects on albums
sales when file-sharing activity was increased on account of something other
than US song popularity. Does the occasionally increased availability of music
from Germany affect US sales?

The study looked at time periods when German students were on holiday after
demonstrating that P2P use increases at these times. German users collectively
are the #2 P2P suppliers, providing "about one out of every six U.S.
downloads," according to the study. Yet the effects on American sales were not
large enough to be statistically significant. Using this and several other
methods, the study's authors could find no meaningful causality. The
availability and even increased downloads of music on P2P networks did not
correlate to a negative effect on music sales.

"Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file
sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average
album in our sample," the study reports. "Even our most negative point estimate
implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an
album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be
statistically distinguishable from zero."

The study reports that 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, which was a decrease
of about 80 million from the previous year. The RIAA has blamed the majority of
the decrease on piracy, and has maintained that argument in recent years as
music sales have faltered. Yet according to the study, the impact from file
sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total in 2002, leaving
74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves."


Hummm....so it looks like a "job for the boys" for the RIAA backed up by FUD
injected into the majors.

Adam

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