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Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says

Dippo

Dippo

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 27, 2003
1,044
1
Charlotte, NC
Well it seems a study has concluded that music sharing DOESN'T have any affect on CD sales.

Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study says

"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," the study's authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing."
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Even in the most pessimistic version of their model, they found that it would take about 5,000 downloads to displace sales of just one physical CD, the authors wrote. Despite the huge scale of downloading worldwide, that would be only a tiny contribution to the overall slide in album sales over the past several years, they said.
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Here's a link to the actual study (pdf 361KB)
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

Here's another article on the study by The Register
Kazaa and co 'not cause of music biz woes', say Profs

EDIT: added some more links
 
music sharing does affect cd sales...

before napster i bought about 10 cds a year as did most of my friends and family

after i bought none




while it doesn't account for ALL of the drop in sales it does affect it greatly

now i buy more and more cds for many reasons i'm up to around 2 a month recently
 
Before Napster, I never bought a CD.

During Napster, I never bought a CD.

After Napster, I never bought CD.

Is it stealing if you were never going to buy it?

At the very least, it's not lost income on their part, is it?
 
if you never bought a cd before or after then you arn't counted in the sales anyway

but if you use napster and share files that helps other people who would have bought cds by being able to download them from you
 
howard said:
but if you use napster and share files that helps other people who would have bought cds by being able to download them from you
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Yes, that is a very good point. I had actually never thought of it from that perspective.

So if we were to actually pay for files that we downloaded off napster (old), then we would not only have to pay for what we downloaded, but also we would have to pay for the files that others downloaded from us.

Of course one could always just not share, but if everyone did that then there would be nothing to download.
 
I stopped buying music before I started downloading it.

I have found a lot of music that I never would have heard because of downloading.

when I find a band I REALLY like, I'll be inclined to go actually BUY the cd.

I can't really afford to buy cd's just to see if I like the band.

I haven't listened to the radio in 5 years. Therefore I would never hear new music that the record labels want me to hear and thus BUY new music if it werent for downloading and/or borrowing cd's from friends.

I stopped buying CD's, even ones that I really want to give a sale to an artist, because I know the artist doesnt get anything and I refuse to give the RIAA any more money to use to sue consumers. They gained sales by downloads and then LOST THEM ALL.

Bottom line: Downloading music got me buying cd's after a lapse of a few years. Then that stopped because they started sueing. There are a few CD's that I'd really love to buy now, but I wont because I can get the music from friends without the use of the internet. it's all out of spite. you can't scare consumers....SUPPLY AND DEMAND....dont give us crap, dont force us to do what YOU WANT....RIAA...READ THIS. Lower prices (remember when cd's were $12 and worth the purchase??), don't restrict us, dont sue us, and we'll buy. be a dick....and you get dicked...
 
TimDaddy said:
Is it ok if I steal your computer? I was never going to buy it.
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You would be very disappointed when you booted it up and it said "Welcome to Windows" :)

Even so, there is a big difference between a tangible object and a digital copy.

1. There would be no (negligible) cost to the owner in making a digital copy.

2. Since they would still have the original, they would not be deprived of it's benefits.

The bottom line question is, should you receive of the benefits of a song if you can aquire it at no cost to anyone else? This assumes that you wouldn't have bought it if you couldn't have aquired it freely.
 
what is the difference between listening to the radio (and recording your fav song to tape) and using file sharing?

the article makes a very good point even going as far to say that file sharing may increase ablum sales! think about it, it is free publicity. 5000 people download the song and enjoy it and a couple buy the CD. i wonder what numbers are like on the radio 5000 people hear a free song on the radio then a certain number buy the album.

i love iTMS b/c i can buy the song once i hear it on the radio or from a friend! or from the old napster days when i have it on mp3. in my experience i never get as high quality songs unless it is from a CD or purchased from iTMS.

i have not purchased less music, only changed from CD to digital files.
 
to be honest maybe they should work harder on their albums i mean one or two good hit singles on a 12 or 14 song cd is terrible , and 18 or 20 bucks for 13 songs doesnt cut it , then they go off and u see them on vh1 and all that stuff on how rich they are and there cars and all that , i just cant feel bad for them.
 
You hit the nail on the head. 20 bucks for 3 good singles, no thank you.
Espnetboy3 said:
to be honest maybe they should work harder on their albums i mean one or two good hit singles on a 12 or 14 song cd is terrible , and 18 or 20 bucks for 13 songs doesnt cut it , then they go off and u see them on vh1 and all that stuff on how rich they are and there cars and all that , i just cant feel bad for them.
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takao said:
so if sharing cuts down sales why had the austrialian music industry their best year _ever_:
http://www.aria.com.au/news/stats2000.htm
increased with 6,71 percent in the last year

next tuesday the german music industry release their numbers...we will see ;)
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maybe beacuse the german and aussy music industries do not suck, like it does in the US. i thought music was about listening, not about looking at whores and gangsters look cool and be rich.
 
Before VS After

So if we were to actually pay for files that we downloaded off napster (old), then we would not only have to pay for what we downloaded, but also we would have to pay for the files that others downloaded from us.
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I don't really see your logic. The people who downloaded from you would be paying for what they download, so if gets payed anyway. Why pay for it twice?! Most likely you should get an commission for making the album available, like a record shop! :rolleyes:

Well, my before vs after story is just slightly different: i DIDN'T buy albums before Napster (i would record them from a friend or something, basically i used Mini-Discs), and somewhere along the way i decided i wanted to make a CD collection, so i now buy a couple of albums per month. I download some music, and if i really like, i buy the album. If not, well, after a while i usually end up erasing it, so i just "lended" the album. :eek:
 
Once again I speak from a UK point of view. It used to be the case that a new artist would be launched, have a few singles, and a year or so later release an album. It was anticipated, and in many cases eagerly. You had already paid for some of the singles, if not all of them, so had maybe a quarter or half the album tracks, but you wanted the album to see what else they had. Then over the next 6 months to a year they released some m ore of those singles from the first album, and you knew them as you had the album. This helped the motivation and the songs became more popular.

Today, an artist releases some rubbish, nearly always heard the stlye and sound before, and that's if it isnt a cover version. Often within a month, they have an album out. Often it will do well, but more often than not it is selling a small percentage of what it would have done if it had been released the old way. Artists regularly sell less than 10,000 singles in the UK to get into the top 40, 20 years ago they would not have appeared on the radar with that many sales. No-one knows what the artist is really like from 1 single, and I for one am reluctant to pay out for an album on that basis. So I may choose to download some songs. Occasionally the artist is actually very good, and I will buy the album - I buy a couple of CD's per month now. More often than not, I don't even want to keep the rubbish on my HD and delete it.

If the Music Industry want's to know why sales are falling, maybe they should listen to their artists talent, or lack of it, and stop taking us for fools by releasing an album after 1 bad single. The worst ones are the seasonal or holiday tracks. They do well because of the attitude of the people, festive or dancey and fun, and then release an album. They don't see that it was a fluke. Then they start complaining that years ago an album would have sold 50,000 copies minimum. Maybe they should stop and think why we don't buy this garbage. When a real artist releases an album, it usually does very well, and that is how the figures should be judged - compare a real artists sales today with those from 5 years ago.

Marc
 
If downloading music doesnt affect sales then the room doesnt smell when I fart. :rolleyes:

Downloading may not be the only reason that CD sales are down, but it is a big reason. This kind of crap comes out because the people that steal (download) the music dont want to feel they are doing anything wrong. ;)
 
Dippo said:
...There is a big difference between a tangible object and a digital copy.

1. There would be no (negligible) cost to the owner in making a digital copy.

2. Since they would still have the original, they would not be deprived of it's benefits.

The bottom line question is, should you receive of the benefits of a song if you can aquire it at no cost to anyone else? This assumes that you wouldn't have bought it if you couldn't have aquired it freely.
Click to expand...

Everyone talks about a digital copy as if it's just data, some ephemeral abstract non-physical thing. That's utter BS. Data, unless it's being actively transmitted, has to be stored somewhere. The only difference between a digital copy and a CD copy of a song is that they're stored on different mediums, in different formats. CD or hard drive, audio track or MP3, it's still another physical copy of the song.

What you're basically doing by downloading is obtaining a physical copy of the song that you didn't pay anyone for. The fact that you have it on your hard drive, and got it off another hard drive, doesn't change that at all.

If I created something, I'd damn well not want people getting copies of it for themselves all over the place without giving me something for my trouble. RIAA may not fairly compensate the artists, but neither does filesharing, and "heck, they're not getting paid anyway" isn't an excuse.

wPod said:
what is the difference between listening to the radio (and recording your fav song to tape) and using file sharing?
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Easy: when you listen to the radio, you aren't physically acquiring what you're hearing. Your taping analogy is far more accurate, because a physical copy is being created. The difference lies in quality and the possibility of unlimited perfect copies.

Where the RIAA is going wrong is in treating digital copies as if they're a new and different medium from CDs. Yes, you don't get the pretty liner notes/art, etc. or the plastic case; but the songs are so easily transferable from CD to hard drive and back that it may as well be one medium; yet they want to charge you AGAIN as if it's a format change equivalent to tape-to-CD.

I think that if you buy a CD -OR- a download, that fair use rights should cover your ability to have copies of the songs in either format or both, just as lots of people made mix tapes from radio and tapes back in the cassette days. And sharing with your actual circle of friends, just as a bunch of friends used to buy one tape and make copies for the whole group, should still be a gray area that's overlooked.

However, making free copies of the work available to the general public via the Internet (i.e. filesharing) is NOT Fair Use. It's not. Get over it.
 
one of the reasons a lot of sharer cite in justifying their actions is backing up. i personally find it rather hypocritical because there are many things in life where backing up is not an option. i can't back up my ipod. i can't back up my powerbook. (in physical sense...) if it breaks, too bad, i will have to replace it. though court has said that copying one's CDs for back up purposes falls under Fair Use, it doesn't mean we have some inherent right to "free" replacement...
 
It's generally agreed, even by the RIAA, that ripping a CD to your hard drive so you can listen to it on your computer or your portable audio device is fair use. But that's for your own actual personal use. Distributing a song to the general Internet public via filesharing networks, or downloading a song from such a network, is not a personal backup of one's CDs (because if you'd bought the CDs, you wouldn't be downloading!) Nor is it fair use, just as sharing a song with the entire Internet is NOT the same as copying a CD for your immediate circle of friends.
 
rueyeet said:
If I created something, I'd damn well not want people getting copies of it for themselves all over the place without giving me something for my trouble. RIAA may not fairly compensate the artists, but neither does filesharing, and "heck, they're not getting paid anyway" isn't an excuse.
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They wouldn't get paid from me anyways, because I would never buy a CD even if their wasn't file sharing.

Why make me suffer? If there wasn't file sharing, I would just have to do without.
 
jxyama said:
one of the reasons a lot of sharer cite in justifying their actions is backing up. i personally find it rather hypocritical because there are many things in life where backing up is not an option. i can't back up my ipod. i can't back up my powerbook. (in physical sense...) if it breaks, too bad, i will have to replace it. though court has said that copying one's CDs for back up purposes falls under Fair Use, it doesn't mean we have some inherent right to "free" replacement...
Click to expand...

But what if you could backup you powerbook with a replicator? Wouldn't you do it? Apple isn't losing anything because you already bought a powerbook.

The majority of the cost of a CD are in the intellectual "property" and if you break the CD why should you have to pay for the intellectual "property" TWICE? It's not like you can use the broken CD anymore.
 
Dippo said:
They wouldn't get paid from me anyways, because I would never buy a CD even if their wasn't file sharing.

Why make me suffer? If there wasn't file sharing, I would just have to do without.
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so please do without.

it's just like the "smart" kid in HS who claims that he can get straight A's only if he tried. but he doesn't. and until he does and actually gets straight A's, i's say his words have no credibility.
 
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