Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says

MSNBC ^ | March 30, 2004 | By John Borland

[gd124]

A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.

For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.

[ClearCase_guy]

I recently completed an extensive study on a related matter. My results indicate that "Really bad music kills CD sales".

[bwteim]

Wasn't your study based on that other famous study:
"If you keep charging more and more for the same crap, folks eventually wise up?"

[bt-99]

Speaking of crap, this study doesn't pass the smell test. Why would you pay for something available for free?

[samtheman]

Another study shows that the automobile industry has had little effect on sales of horse-drawn-carriages.

[SirTaurus]

Quailty! The mp3's that are being shared are of lesser quality than the retail CD. So you d/l the mp3 find oput that it's somthing you would want to purchase

[Drammach]

The Recording Industry Association of America was quick to dismiss the results as inconsistent with earlier findings. "Countless well-respected groups and analysts, including Edison Research, Forrester, and the University of Texas, among others, have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs," RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss said in a statement. "Our own surveys show that those who are downloading more are buying less."

Oh, where do I start?
What were the results of those studies? Is the research data available? Has it had peer review?
And..... Who paid for the studies? RIAA?

As to RIAA's own surveys, is that data available?
As they were doing a "survey", what questions were asked?
Who was surveyed? What groups or demographic types?
Were any of the people surveyed part of the music industry? Motion picture industry? Entertainment Industry?
Were the questions crafted to produce skewed results?

Lots of questions here..

[zeugma]

Speaking of crap, this study doesn't pass the smell test. Why would you pay for something available for free?

Oh, I don't know about that. A few come to mind.

• Convienience
  many folks don't hhave the time to search for decent stuff on the various file-sharing network.
• Liner notes (packaging)
  Yeah, I know, album art is dead. Most commercial music has useful stuff that comes with it though like lyrics, artist bio, & whatnot.
• sound quality
  MP3 is a form of lossy compression, among other things. The original CD will always sound better.
• Supporting artists you like.
  Ya. Some people actually care if good musicians continue to make good music

There are lots of good reasons for using MP3 as well. I have my entire CD collection ripped to my hard drive. It's 30GB and I like the ability to randomly play across my entire music mix. I still like to have the album, which actually now serves as more of a backup of my disk than anything else because I never use them beyond the initial rip.

I think the music industry is being pretty stupid about the way they are reacting to the whole filesharing thing. From what I know of people who have done a significant amount of it, they all have actually bought more people because of the convienience of having their music available to use in multiple ways than they would have prior.

[zook]

This study reveals what I've long suspected. Since I began downloading 2 years ago, my cd purchases have gone up. Why do I buy when I could probably download an entire cd for free? For one thing, I do have a sense of fair play. For another, downloading an entire cd is a pain in the neck. Once you download it, you have to put it on some portable medium. Finally, when you download, you don't get the liner notes, artwork, etc.

The music industry has claimed that downloading hurts sales. But their evidence is weak. It doesn't even account for the substantial drop in new releases over the past few years.

Downloading is safe, moral, and effective when used appropriately.

[bwteim]

"Why would you pay for something available for free?"

People buy a lot for fancy bottled water instead of drinking from the tap.

[CatoRenasci]

In talking with our kids and their friends, I think that downloading has reduced CD sales to a limited extent, especially the impulse purchase at the margin.

Music the kids are slightly interested in hearing, they download, music they really like, they often buy for the higher quality,

One of things I noticed before downloading was kids buying a CD for one song. You don't see much of that anymore. But, when I was a kid in the '50s, we had 45 singles as well as albums. If there was one song you wanted, you bought the single, not an album with just one good song.

[11th Earl of Mar]

I have downloaded a lot of music that I would never have purchased.

Download for free and try it out? Yes.

Pay $12-$15 for that music? No.

[Wonder Warthog]

"A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales."

Publisher Jim Baen (Baen's Books) proved the same thing for books. He found that by "giving away" e-books of authors less-popular stories, that it actually increased sales of their more popular stuff. I'm sure the same effect would exist for "e-music".

[El Conservador]

...and that's precisely what the RIAA does not want: Selective, knowledgeable buyers.

You won't get CD-quality sound with MP3s, so if you want crisp sound, you buy the CD.

People now buy what they want, not whatever crap the RIAA goons offer.

Reduced sales are natural, because the selectivity will narrow the buyer's choice.

The RIAA goons would rather have us buy $#!+loads of bad music to sift through to find something worth of our time.

We need to tell the RIAA we're smarter than that, and if it takes downloading music wholesale, so be it.

[monday]

"Speaking of crap, this study doesn't pass the smell test. Why would you pay for something available for free?"

I used to download music so I could decide what CD's were actually worth purchasing. I ended up buying many more CD's than I would have normally. These days I only purchase perhaps one a month instead of 5 or 6.

[bird4four4]

Why would you pay for something available for free

Convience. Yeah I could searh the web, find files, download them, covert them, complie them, burn them, create a case. Or I could go buy it, have better sound quality, original cover art, and play in my car on the way home. Rather that spend my whole evening working at it.

[grumple]

When you've heard one lyrically depressed group of malcontents, who are upset with the way their parents raised them...you've heard them all - kills cd sales

when you've heard a few lyrically challenged rap artist who's standout talent on any one record is to highlight his contempt for bitches and ho's and what they should be doing on their knees, you've heard them all - a real cd sales killer

when you've heard a drugged out punk who does one album and kills himself suicidally - well now, that's a real cd killer, not to mention a few other things.

As in the case with country music....when you constantly promote artists such as Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks and do very little to promote lesser known stars such as Mark Chesnutt, Brad paisley, Sara Evans among others - then you only tend to focus your cd sales in one area thereby eliminating your own potential market - hmmm, that will kill cd sales as well...self inflicted I might add.

When you improperly place blame at "music swappers" who are tired of buying a 12 song album where 10 of them are crap, and consequently getting ripped off by music companies...well I hate to say it, but that will kill your CD sales as well.

gee...where to begin? My "comprehensive study" (ahem...from a consumer's point of view) took all of about 5 minutes...

will they listen to me? Probably not...so I should prepare myself for more crappy music in the future...

Ho Hum....

[tm22721]

People buy a lot for fancy bottled water instead of drinking from the tap.

All that's about to change. The Bottled Water Association is lobbying for a bill that makes it illegal to download water from your tap.

BUMP

[lewislynn]

And firing you to hire a foreigner is good for YOU...It "might" even "create" a new job for YOU.

[bwteim]

I had not realized that there is an International Bottled Water Association, I stand correct and eagerly await their bill....

IBWA