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File sharing makes no difference to record sales

Daniel Fleshbourne Administrator Neowin @dfleshbourne · Mar 30, 2004 03:36 EST · Hot! with 1 comment

RESEARCH APPEARS to back up what teenagers have been saying for years - file sharing is not stuffing the music industry. A study conducted jointly by researchers from Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has found that in 2002 music sales were unaffected by the increase in file sharing, and the industry may have even benefited from it.

Researchers looked at data from file-sharing services was used and 1.75 million downloads during a 17-week period in 2002. They said that while there were a large number of downloads during this period most people who shared files appear to be individuals who would not have bought the albums that they downloaded anyway. In addition the Harvard/North Carolina study found that in a "worse case scenario" it would take more than 5000 downloads to reduce album sales by a single copy.

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