This isn’t really all that surprising: a Canadian government-funded study says that P2P filesharing is good for the sale of music. From Jack Kapica’s report at the Globe and Mail website:
The study is called The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada, and was written by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, of the Department of Management at the University of London in England.
Its conclusion: P2P file-sharing does not put downward pressure on purchasing music, as the music industry has insisted for years. In fact, it does just the opposite: It tends to increase music purchasing.
To me, that’s not a bit counter-intuitive: a lot of those folks sharing files are music lovers, after all. Music lovers tend to collect music, and buying is part of that. Also from the G&M report:
The study concluded that about half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs. Another quarter were downloaded because they were just not available in music stores.
It would be nice if studies like this mean that we’re in the end stages of the war big music companies seem to be waging against their customers, but that’s not likely.
TAGS: FILESHARING, MUSIC, DOWNLOADS
