drteknikal's blog

Yahoo! News - Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales: "Internet music piracy has no negative effect on legitimate music sales, according to a study released today by two university researchers that contradicts the music industry's assertion that the illegal downloading of music online is taking a big bite out of its bottom line.

"Songs that were heavily downloaded showed no measurable drop in sales, the researchers found after tracking sales of 680 albums over the course of 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. Matching that data with activity on the OpenNap file-sharing network, they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy, the researchers found."

Ahem. File sharing did not decrease sales, it actually had a positive effect on sales of popular albums. The recording industry has just closed its best year ever, despite their global attempts to bite the hands that feed them.