The Internet: All the music in the world that nobody's buying…

[ghettosynth]

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[A.M. Gold]

Well, my info was a little dated. It was arguably a small number until either this year or last. The past year's figures show that 35% of recorded music sales are legal DL's, up from 20% in 2007:

http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_090818.html

[A.M. Gold]

The problem with pointing a blind finger at piracy is that it is a distraction that prevents the industry from moving in more positive directions.

I'm interested to know what your personal rationale is as to why you think mass file sharing happens but sales aren't affected. Do you think that most of what is traded are things people would never have an interest in buying, and the rest is treated as "demo" material that is then later purchased?

[ckatrun411]

I'm looking at you Primitive Radio Gods.

[A.M. Gold]

The problem with pointing a blind finger at piracy is that it is a distraction that prevents the industry from moving in more positive directions.

I'm interested to know what your personal rationale is as to why you think mass file sharing happens but sales aren't affected. Do you think that most of what is traded are things people would never have an interest in buying, and the rest is treated as "demo" material that is then later purchased?

Actually, I'll answer my own question here. I might be willing to believe that file sharing doesn't significantly hurt music sales, for reasons I'll state next, but I have a very hard time buying that it "helps".

The reason I think it may not hurt (though I have yet to be swayed on this) is because most of the people who participate at all in PTP networks are kids and students who have traditionally not had much discretionary money to spend anyway. Sales aren't lost in large numbers because they were limited to begin with.

The reason I don't believe that PTP helps music is (in spite of what some of these polls supposedly say, which I don't trust) I don't think most people illegally download music and then go out and buy it later. I think that happens to some extent, but is almost always only true when the person doing so wants the physical medium, i.e.the CD or vinyl, not because they care about supporting the artist. I think the latter does happen, but it is the exception, not the rule.

And you can throw all the polls at me you want. Polls are polls and they can be way off, and they are often done with very small sampling:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicbl ... ownloading

And they rely on the "honesty" of people who are already engaged in illegal activity, which wouldn't be the first thing I would want to refer to when trying to establish facts in this or any other case.

[ghettosynth]

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[ghettosynth]

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[ghettosynth]

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[A.M. Gold]

So it seems reasonable to assume that people are downloading instead of buying. But this has to be verified and most research suggests that this isn't the case. The decline in CD sales could be for many reasons but I like this quote from the NYTimes piece:

But on what are these studies based? Polls? Again, I can't see any reason to trust the polling data. People often lie to cover up something they deem as embarrassing. There's just no way to establish that these polls are accurate because of a) sample size and b) honesty of the responses being impossible to verify.

So what is this telling us? It's saying that CDs are not a medium of interest but that the idea of paying for digital downloads is also not interesting. The faulty reasoning is to think that consumers don't want to pay for something that they can get for free. Correct reasoning is that consumers don't want to pay for something which they perceive has no value. The latter may include the former but not necessarily.

I know personally that I've never purchased a DRM encumbered piece of music in my life and I never will. The idea of paying for iTunes when they were DRM encumbered was simply out of the question. I wasn't downloading as an alternative, the alternative is simply not to purchase music.

Another aspect of digital downloads that pertains to eduardo's point is that are not as effective in connecting you to the artist. They implicitly have less value and yet are still priced very similarly to a CD.

I won't argue with you that mp3's are overpriced but, again, you've cited something that you call "faulty reasoning" and I still consider that to be a statement of opinion on your part. Studies based on small sample polling where this file sharing phenomenon is engaged in by millions of people every day are just not enough to convince me. What's more, some of these studies are actually paid for by ISP's, who have everything to gain and nothing to lose from the continuation of illegal downloading.

[P.T.]

Research is only as good as the people who design the model and parameters.

These days people will hire a research company that will model in order to get the 'right' results.

Like in court where you get dueling 'experts' to support their side who will often insist that the truth is the opposite of what the other expert says.

[A.M. Gold]

Here's some research that connected file sharing with drops in music sales:

http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/topics/vol5/iss1/art21/

http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/intprop/main.htm

[A.M. Gold]

Research is only as good as the people who design the model and parameters.

These days people will hire a research company that will model in order to get the 'right' results.

Like in court where you get dueling 'experts' to support their side who will often insist that the truth is the opposite of what the other expert says.

Which is why it can be a good idea to "follow the money" and see who is funding these studies.

One piece of circumstantial evidence I would present is simply in looking at the behavior of the RIAA.

Going back to their fight with Napster, you could easily conclude that they might just be panicking and reacting to what they perceived to be a huge threat.

However we are ten years into the mass file sharing phenomenon, and the RIAA still hasn't let up on their position. They have stopped pursuing individual lawsuits, but their attitude is exactly the same in opposing PTP sharing as it has always been.

Now, why on earth would an organization that represents the business interests of the recording artists and labels in the U.S. vehemently oppose something that had been proven to be a catalyst for sales within their industry? Don't you think they would have caught on by now (a decade into this issue) if the reliable evidence really was out there that file sharing helped, rather than hurt with overall music sales?

[ghettosynth]

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[ghettosynth]

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[ghettosynth]

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