8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

  • 8sided About
  • memora8ilia

How File-Sharing Affects Album Sales (c. 2008)

January 24, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Billboard:

In a study called “Purchase, Pirate, Publicize: The Effect of File Sharing on Album Sales,” Jonathan Lee of Queen’s University in Ontario monitored both the sales and pirated downloads of 2,251 albums… from 2008. (For some perspective, that’s the same year that Spotify arrived in the U.S.) Legitimate album sales data came from Nielsen SoundScan, while file sharing stats were pulled from a BitTorrent tracker. “From the results, I conclude that file sharing activity has a statistically significant but economically modest negative effect on legitimate music sales,” he writes.



He added, “But the results can also inform business and policy decisions in the market for music and for other media as well. Trade groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) spend considerable effort and resources to deter piracy and shut down file sharing networks like the one studied in this paper. If the effect of file sharing on sales is small, this expense may not be worth it. The results of this paper should help to inform such cost–benefit analysis by trade groups, law enforcement agencies, and policymakers.”



TorrentFreak:

One of the downsides is that the data itself is relatively old, from 2008, and the music industry has changed a lot since then. This means that the results may have been different today. Also, it’s worth noting that the download numbers come from a BitTorrent tracker that counts a relatively high share of music aficionados. They may also act differently than the general file-sharer.



Complete Music Update:

{According to the study,} while file-sharing activity had a negative impact on CD sales, the word-of-mouth marketing power of the file-sharing community actually aided legit download sales. Perhaps suggesting that file-sharers were quick to shun physical products as file-sharing became an option, but they nevertheless used the file-sharing networks – to an extent at least – as a try-before-you-buy platform.



Lee adds that the extent to which the marketing power of file-sharing offset lost CD sales varied according to the level of artists, with “bottom tier” acts losing out the most. Though, the researcher ponders that this might be because their music wasn’t as attractive to file-sharers who were trying before they buy, i.e. the music itself was the problem.



As for what all this tells us about today, the report focuses on data that pre-dates the big shift of digital consumption from downloads to streams, so mainly identifies trends occurring in a specific moment of time. Though, given the disparity in ‘is file-sharing good or bad for music?’ reports over the years, it’s good to see one that acknowledges both outcomes and tries to balance one off another.

------------------

Related posts:

  1. Vinyl’s Rise in Defiance of the Intangible
  2. Dark Days for College Radio
  3. Vinyl Sales May Be Rising, But Have You Seen Who’s Buying It?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Piracy, The State Of The Music Industry

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8sided.blog

 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a slightly jaded but surprisingly optimistic fellow who's haunted the music industry for longer than he cares to admit. A former Q-Burns Abstract Message.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."
 
  Learn More →

Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Exploring

Roll The Dice

For a random blog post

Click here

or for something cool to listen to
(refresh this page for another selection)

Linking

Blogroll

A Closer Listen
Austin Kleon
Atlas Minor
blissblog
Craig Mod
Disquiet
feuilleton
Headpone Commute
Hissy Tapes
Jay Springett
Kottke
Metafilter
One Foot Tsunami
1000 Cuts
Parenthetical Recluse
Poke In The Ear
Robin Sloan
Seth Godin
The Creative Independent
The Red Hand Files
Things Magazine
Warren Ellis LTD

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

Newsroll

Dada Drummer
Dense Discovery
Dirt
Erratic Aesthetic
First Floor
Garbage Day
Kneeling Bus
Lorem Ipsum
Midrange
MusicREDEF
Orbital Operations
Sasha Frere-Jones
The Browser
The Honest Broker
The Maven Game
Today In Tabs
Tone Glow
Why Is This Interesting?

 

TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian

TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back

EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

ACT

Climate Action Resources
+
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers
+
Roe v. Wade: What You Can Do

Copyright © 2023 · 8D Industries, LLC · Log in