Force Flow
03-30-2004, 06:05 PM
Harvard just released a study that says music downloading has almost zero impact on sales. Although the RIAA will no doubt dispute this study…I am inclined to believe in a Harvard study over anything the RIAA says.
Researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.
...
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.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5181562.html?tag=nefd_top
~From HardOCP
I think we all know by know that the RIAA will do almost anything to get a buck in their pocket.
Researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.
...
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.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5181562.html?tag=nefd_top
~From HardOCP
I think we all know by know that the RIAA will do almost anything to get a buck in their pocket.