industry canada p2p study shows

Industry Canada P2P Study Shows Posititve Effects on Music Biz and more...

A dynamite study just released from Industry Canada shows that P2P

file sharing is good for the music business, and even more...

Here's part of the abstract:

Our review of existing econometric studies suggests that P2P

file-sharing tends to decrease music purchasing. However, we find

the opposite, namely that P2P filesharing tends to increase rather

than decrease music purchasing.

Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest

that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by

0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one

CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to

find evidence of any relationship between P2P filesharing and

purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs

from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly 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 and roughly one

quarter were downloaded because they were not available for

purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs

downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced

music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being

associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.

We find evidence that purchases of other forms of entertainment

such as cinema and concert tickets, and video games tend to

increase with music purchases. It has been argued in the literature

that the increase in the number of entertainment substitutes has

led to a decline in music purchasing, but our results do not

support this hypothesis. As expected, we find that reported

interest in music is very strongly associated with music purchases.

Finally, our results suggest that household income is not important

in explaining music purchases.

(emphasis added)

The study was done by two researchers at the University of London, and

can be found here.

It looks like music to our ears. I look forward to reading past the

abstract...but I wanted to get this out fast...

It is entitled: 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.

PS - update - See Jack Kapica's analysis on the politics of this...

HK

Posted by Howard Knopf at 4:56 PM