Less popular artists profit from filesharing

Written by Ernesto on November 22, 2005 

The rich get poorer and the poor get richer. That’s what filesharing does for the music industry. No wonder the RIAA is desperately trying to shutdown all filesharing activities.

A recent overview of the current literature on the effect of filesharing on record sales shows that the most popular artist (top 25%) sell less records. However, the remaining 75% of all artists actually profits from filesharing. How this is possible?

Easy, sharing increases the amount of artists you get familiar with. Especially BitTorrent sites are an excellent platform for promoting new, or less popular artists.

First of all, on BitTorrent sites the users decide what’s popular, not the radiostations, record labels and pluggers. Besides this, it’s far more easy to first download an album, listen to it, and then decide if you want to buy it or not. Sure, most of the people will not buy the album, but since you will probably tell tell your friends about this “great new album”, popularity will grow, and eventually the artist will profit from it.

An excellent example is the band Harvey Danger who offers the opportunity to download their album on their website. As soon as they decided to do this, their popularity grew. By offering their album as a download, they gained a lot of fans, collected donations, and probably sold more albums.

Something to think about…

If you don't like torrents try MP3 Fiesta. They hold nearly 67,000 albums from nearly 17,000 artists. Prices are around the $0.10 mark for single tracks with full albums coming in at roughly $1.00. Tracks are available from 192kbps and they take major credit cards and PayPal

Previously: BitTorrent & Firefox

Next: the MPAA and Bram Cohen are going to make a big announcement

88 Responses

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 » Show All

1 Feb 15, 2006 at 22:57 by Eric

i totally agree with this…once i started DLing songs i got exposed to WAY more music i never would’ve bothered to hear…and bands i DO like i still go buy the CD to support them

2 Feb 16, 2006 at 00:18 by Ernesto

I agree a bit. People should still support their favorite bands by buying cd’s

but.

the internet and filesharing offers a great opportunity for starting bands to reach the public. Personally I don’t need some guy in a suit to decide what kind of music I should listen to.

Take a look at http://www.jamendo.com/en/

This is how it should be, we should decide what’s good. Most of the money should go to the artists, not the 10% or less they get now.

3 Feb 17, 2006 at 16:01 by zeussy

yea, i wouldnt listen to 1/3 of the bands i listen to now if i couldnt download a track or two of theirs first. coz lets face it, just buy a random cd these days often leads to u buying absolute shit

4 Feb 22, 2007 at 02:29 by yeluymty

If u don’t want to see this message again please write me your website link at: tuxcop@yahoo.co.uk Your URL will be immediately removed from Data Basea

5 Feb 22, 2007 at 10:19 by rjyradmo

If u don’t want to see this message again please write me your website link at: tuxcop@yahoo.co.uk Your URL will be immediately removed from Data Base

6 Feb 22, 2007 at 18:32 by ofrizwyv

If u don’t want to see this message again please write me your website link at: tuxcop@yahoo.co.uk Your URL will be immediately removed from Data Basee

7 Mar 19, 2007 at 11:55 by Elza

Oh o ho! very nice site!e

8 Mar 27, 2007 at 08:03 by Katie

Hello people! Nice site!

9 Mar 31, 2007 at 08:06 by Katie

I you all love!n

10 Apr 10, 2007 at 04:41 by Joon

Fascinating site and well worth the visit. I will be back2

11 Apr 12, 2007 at 13:09 by Bob

i love this site.e

12 Apr 13, 2007 at 18:09 by Jersey

Many interesting information on your site - keep up good work2

13 Sep 29, 2007 at 17:43 by sveta

Your work is marvelous!!u

14 Sep 30, 2007 at 07:39 by Hillary

Check out my new site:)

15 Sep 30, 2007 at 16:57 by sveta

Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site. I have learned a lot from your site. Thanks!!k

16 Oct 02, 2007 at 01:19 by Hillary

You have built a good website

17 Oct 02, 2007 at 18:11 by Hillary

I\’l be back… :)

18 Oct 02, 2007 at 23:06 by Bill

Nice site… Cool guestbook…+

19 Oct 03, 2007 at 20:48 by Bill

Hi, everybodyi

20 Oct 04, 2007 at 15:16 by Bill

Hello stupid pendosegi.b

21 Oct 05, 2007 at 02:58 by Hillary

This is very interesting site…a

22 Oct 05, 2007 at 11:12 by Hillary

I enjoy your site very much! THANK YOUs

23 Oct 06, 2007 at 00:15 by Britney

Your work is marvelous!!e

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 » Show All

Responses are closed

All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Thanks to all who made serious comments.