Music file trading doesn’t harm sales

[avram]

Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales':

Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf monitored 680 albums, chosen from a range of musical genres, downloaded over 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. They used computer programs to automatically monitor downloads and compared this data to changes in album sales over the same period to see if a link could be established.

The most heavily downloaded songs showed no decrease in CD sales as a result of increasing downloads. In fact, albums that sold more than 600,000 copies during this period appeared to sell better when downloaded more heavily.

Comments

[stormsweeper.livejournal.com]

Bayta barks? O_o

I don't get it

[acrobatty.livejournal.com]

How does this show downloading doesn't hurt sales?

Their results are: some records turn out to be more downloaded than others. These also sell better. When the same record is downloaded more often than it had been, it also sells more.

This does not prove what they want it to. It just proves that popular tracks are popular.

On a very hot day, more people open up fire hydrants for sprinklers and more people also buy more bottled water, as compared to an only kinda-hot day. This does not somehow show that illegally opening hydrants doesn't cut into sales of water. It remains quite possible that if it were harder to open the hydrants, some of the people who now open them would buy water instead. On any day.

I don't know if downloading does cut down on sales. But this study is irrelevant.