Canadian Study: Piracy Boosts CD Sales
Written by Ernesto on November 03, 2007A recent study on the impact of filesharing on CD sales shows that the more music people download on P2P-networks, the more CDs they buy.
University of London researchers, Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz surveyed a large group of Canadians to find out what the effect of piracy is on music sales. The results are surprising, at least, for the music industry.
The researchers conclude that that people who download more music actually buy more CDs. They report: “We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.”
This basically means that if someone downloads 270 songs a year via BitTorrent, he or she will buy 9 CDs more than someone who only downloads 27 songs. So, in a way illegal downloads actually convert into more CD sales.
Overall the researchers found no difference between pirates and other people in the number of CDs they buy. They did not find a positive or a negative relationship between filesharing and CD sales. So, at worst, filesharing isn’t the cause for a drop in CD sales. It might even be a boon to it.
This study once again confirms that piracy is not as bad as the recording industry content “owners” want us to believe. Filesharing gives people the opportunity to discover new music for free. It makes it easier to try new music before you buy. Right now, downloading songs off P2P networks is pretty much the only way to listen to complete tracks before deciding to buy them.
It is worth mentioning that there are legal alternatives, like Soundpedia and Lala.com’s upcoming service, which will let you stream entire songs for free. However, most people will still prefer pirated music because the quality is much better and they can transfer it to their MP3 player.
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63 Responses
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I often have to listen to an album a few times before I really like it. With p2p, I’m able to do this and make a better educated buy. I don’t know about other people, but I’d hate to spend $21.99 + on a CD and find out its crap.
Since I’m under age, I can’t have a credit card, so this limits me to the music I can buy because here in Canada, they don’t seem to have that great of a selection at the local music stores. A lot of the music I listen to comes from overseas, and it is very unpopular among the local crowd, so it is hard to get the music I like even at the $21.99 + price tag :(
I really hope that this starts to change some peoples tune about filesharing and makes our government finally realize that it isn’t bad. It’s actually a good thing.
If it weren’t for p2p, I wouldn’t have half as many CDs as I have now.
Why does it have to be that downloading INCREASES music sales, and not just:
People who download music LIKE MUSIC, and therefore are prone to buy more in general regardless of torrents.
Why does downloading and buying have to be directly linked in the behaviours of my mind, they are cousins (similar trends) and not twins (where one only gains if the other looses).
el90, good point, certainly.
Downloading music is the best way of discovering new artists whose CDs may be bought after listening to dowloaded MP3s
See the recent crap with Bell?? I think as a country we need a class action of our own against a certain two companies. The recording industry has these two comapanies playing by their agendas not the peoples.
These statistics do not apply to me. Ever since I began file sharing, I have stopped buying cds. I support the artists by going to concerts and buying merchandise.
Besides, most of the artists I listen to are dead. If I bought their CD, I wouldn’t be supporting the artist. My money would go strait to the record executives, and I see no point in doing that.
I often have to listen to an album a few times before I really like it. With p2p, I’m able to do this and make a better educated buy. I don’t know about other people, but I’d hate to spend $21.99 + on a CD and find out its crap.
Since I’m under age, I can’t have a credit card, so this limits me to the music I can buy because here in Canada, they don’t seem to have that great of a selection at the local music stores. A lot of the music I listen to comes from overseas, and it is very unpopular among the local crowd, so it is hard to get the music I like even at the $21.99 + price tag
I really hope that this starts to change some peoples tune about filesharing and makes our government finally realize that it isn’t bad. It’s actually a good thing.
If it weren’t for p2p, I wouldn’t have half as many CDs as I have now.
Downloading music means bad artists will have another stream to expose their music (although they wont’ be successful anyways) while good ones spread across the net on fire, hence boost their sales more.
It really depends on the person. People are willing to give money away to good music to support the artist. We kept hinting that, but nobody is taking advantage of this stream of income in a way we’re willing to give money away.
I see it for what it is. If I go into a US electronic store and see a $60 laptop mouse and recognize it’s $5 in China, I wouldn’t buy the mouse.
I never buy CDs because I know it’s only a CD-R burnt with tracks of music, which costs 20 cent + 10 cent for the case, but they price it at $15-$20. Why not really give something to consumers?
When CD-R writers are available to the public, and that CDs can be ripped to mp3s, they should have anticipated the change and taken another route to sell their products instead of following the same retail way. They’re not changing their route probably because they’re still profiting from retail. Now they’re unable to catch up and now they have to rely on hackers and police to cut losses.
If they still want to be in business a decade from now (when the majority of people become more computer literate), they’ll need to have to be adaptable.
At real I likes more music what 15-30 years old . That time was when alot brightest music bands starts. I guess music industry can’t to offer such quality musics right now - they got methods for pushing trash on CD sales by loosy promotions and technological advantages, and can’t turn out of this due huge mistakes followed through spending megabucks into pseudo-stars. Managers like to “switch” out from own mistakes to P2P “piracy” for actioners and owners of music labels, this is very convinient way :)
el90 has, I’d say, explained the survey much better than that reached by the experts: certainly as applicable to me, I have more CDs than most of my friends bar one. He’s the only one of my friends who uses p2p more than I do. However, I am sure that we would both say that this is because we’re music lovers. This makes us more likely to buy CDs, but also to download music.
I also agree with what Norm says: when an artist is dead, the band have split, 3 members of the band have ousted the genius from the band and turned the band into a karaoke band (Misfits, Dead Kennedys, we’re looking at you), or if a band are particularly rich already, then I would download instead of buy: it wouldn’t have been supporting good new music if you’d have bought it, just the record labels, the rich people who get richer, or the people who sold out the music for more cash. Hence I would definitely download anything by Handel, anything byRobert Johnson, anything by Led Zepelin, and anything by the DKs. However, buying a recrd by a new band, particularly a young and up-and-coming band, would take precedence for me. With a current band I would not download their music unless I had already bought one CD, or if I was gonna do so a couple of weeks later. I would consider the £10 (about $20) I gave the band for that CD to pay for the rest of their stuff, if I was paying what it was worth. If the industry then stealsmost of it from the band, then what hope is there?
The title is misleading. The study does not demonstrate that piracy boosts CD sales. It demonstrates that piracy and CD sales are not correlated (piracy neither boosts nor harms CD sales). It does demonstrate the ratio of downloads to CD sales among those who download, but that does not indicate a causal relationship. You might as well say that for every CD you buy, it causes you to download 2.27 songs.
It is true that studies actually show nothing anyway, since they are mostly based on samples, and statistics, which are sweeping at best. However we al know that the responsible pirate use p2p as a try before you buy platform. I agree that whatever the cost of a CD, it is too much… In South Africa, and the rest of the third world, we have to deal with exchange rates too, which means that a CD now costs about as much as a few day’s groceries!!! I am NOT going to buy a cheap piece of plastic, with some digital infomation burnt on to it, for the same money I can feed my family for a few days, and then pray that I haven’t wasted my money because actually the CD has the next led zepplin on it. Rather I am going to be a shrewd consumer, exercising the latent democracy in consumerism, that entitles me to ignore false advertising and marketing. I am going to choose what I buy based on experience, not promises. And I agree with the TF article above, that while there are other platforms for sampling music, they don’t offer the ability to see how that music fits into your lifestyle. Most of us aren’t just buying music to listen to it, but as part of how we define ourselves. We all feel that we OWN it and are in some way responsible for it. In that capacity, listening to a bad quality streaming copy of ONE song, does not satisfy. I want it on my IPOD, and I want to listen to the album through 5 times on my way to and from work, before I am willing to attach my name and identity to it. p2p offers me that, NO other platform can…..
> statistics, which are sweeping at best
The study is specific to Canadians with a sample size of 2,000 p2p users. Within that context, their finds are possibly accurate. You can’t apply the results to users in other countries. It would like surveying favorites foods in China and touting that as the same as the rest of the world.
Anyway, WalMart is starting to offer DVD kiosks where you can burn DVDs. I could see this happening with audio CDs. With broadband, a kiosk could download songs and burn a CD in 20 minutes. All the songs you can fit on a CD for say $10.00.
“It demonstrates that piracy and CD sales are not correlated (piracy neither boosts nor harms CD sales).”
It doesn’t even demonstrate that - the only meaningful result I got from it is that people who download a lot of music also buy a lot of music. It neither confirms nor denies a causal relationship between downloading and buying music. It’s entirely possible that heavy downloaders would buy more CDs if they didn’t have the p2p option.
el90 came the closest to reading this correctly - people who like music will acquire more music, both by downloading more and buying more than those who don’t like music (or who are less enthusiastic about it).
And for those who say they don’t buy music recorded by dead artists because the record company takes all of the money - that’s bullshit. Whatever royalty the artist would have received goes to his/her heirs.
This is completely True. Im normally not a fan of supporting the recording industry. However, just this week after listening to a pre-release downloaded copy of Hedley’s new album, im on my way now to buy it.
File sharing makes bands more popular, but the problem with it is that if it gets to popular the record companies may not make money. Therefore the bands wont get tours, concerts or air showings.
fluglebinder’s got an excellent point about the relative value of physical CDs being skewed- when you hold up $30 worth of groceries and a $30 import from HMV next to each other, it becomes next to impossible to justify spending that kind of money. CD stores tend to not only not have what a lot of people are looking for, but the prices aren’t really justifiable.
I realize the study was canadian, but we’re all connected to the same internet, and therefore online, the same stuff is available to all of us. it’s a beautiful equalizing factor.
I’m quite certain that is Bullshit for mainstream media. For indie artists, definitely piracy will help promote and get awareness of new artists but for mainstream - it will only cause a very small percentage to buy the product, while more will turn to piracy.
I’m for Piracy, as long as it’s not my content - if it was my content then of course I’m going to get angry and I’d probably do some of the stupid things that the RIAA did/are doing. Anger blinds you, and clouds your judgement and otherwise rational people become complete idiots.
In the US CD sales have been down a significant figure though. From about 13 billion in 2000 to a little over 9 billion today. That’s around 45% less than from a few years ago. It would be nice to say that P2P helps increase these figures, but it’s not true. The record companies are planning a different attack though. They’ll take it out of our a$$ in the concerts… you watch. A hot concert will be about as expensive as the Super Bowl.
I don’t buy CDs anymore, but I download albums all the time. I’m in college now, but when I was in high school about 80% of my income went into buying CDs. As such, I have a collection of about 800 CDs, but I haven’t bought any in the past few years. Why? It’s mostly an issue of quality for me. I haven’t found anything worth buying in the last 5 years. The internet has entirely destroyed the culture of music which I once embraced. It used to be difficult to find good, new artists. I would have to go to dozens of local shows and spend a long time looking for a decent new artist. Now it’s as simple as logging onto last.fm and checking my neighbors. There’s no thrill of the hunt anymore, and there’s certainly no longer any room for anyone to be an expert. In a culture where everyone has a 20+GB iPod, everyone is a music expert. There’s no longer any context for a music collector, let alone an afficionado. For me, BitTorrent didn’t kill the music industry.. promotion did.
Hahaha, yeah right.
Nov 03, 2007 at 23:36 by herman_mQuote herman_m
> statistics, which are sweeping at best
The study is specific to Canadians with a sample size of 2,000 p2p users. Within that context, their finds are possibly accurate. You can’t apply the results to users in other countries. It would like surveying favorites foods in China and touting that as the same as the rest of the world.
Even in Canada a sample of 2000 people is hardly representative of the population of people in canada alone who pirate AND buy CDs. What kind of questions were asked in the survey? Did they leave room for answers? No, because you can’t conduct a survey like that, you have to give a person a few answers from which to choose, since this is the only way to compile any consistent data, but that means that all your consistent data is non-reflective of people’s opinions, because you have given them answers to choose, and not answers they would give… THAT is why I say statistics are meaningless… 2000 people in Canada choose from five abcd answers in a questionaire and we are supposed to believe that this is a representaion of consumer trends in Canada? you must be joking!!!!
“In the US CD sales have been down a significant figure though. From about 13 billion in 2000 to a little over 9 billion today. That’s around 45% less than from a few years ago. It would be nice to say that P2P helps increase these figures, but it’s not true.”
How can piracy be blamed for that?? Look at the release groups that are spreading most of the pirated information first: Most of the best ones have been around since the 80s, piracy has been around even longer. It is just becoming more accessible along with everything else, thanks to the internet…
Most new car manufacturers are putting in mp3 players: ipods and the like are having soaring sales. CDs, are dead, just like tapes and VHS and whatever. THAT is why there are declining sales. Are the same studies that show declining CD sales, looking at the link between this and rising mp3 sales, on sites like iTunes?
This whole thing is turning into more of a flame war than anything else. Officials and companies are taking the moral high ground while doing dirty things themselves. It’s the oldest trick in the book… Until I can support what I think is good music, without watching people like Britany Spears et al, become multi millionaires, I’m not interested in purchasing a damn thing. How much money does the CEO of Warner Bros. or Sony america make? People always complain about the exploited third world workers making nikes and whatnot for 2 cents a day while the CEOS make 100 000 dollars a day. what is the difference between that and a small band from idaho getting 3 cents for every cd sold, while the CEOS play golf 3 times week? What is the difference?
i steal? music most of the time. i would buy it if the money went directly to the artist and not the intermediaries. in the digital age, where you can listen to music stations online thats how i discover new music, not from a record store or from ads in paper an tv. i hope in the future that artists will directly publish the songs themselves. mind you, if i really like the songs i buy the cd. then rip it to my ipod in a sound quality i like.
I download mew music constantly from various sources. If I like it, chances are I’ll buy at least one full album by the artist from iTunes. If I don’t, I’ll delete it for the HD space. No cost incurred, no harm done.
Sometimes I’ll buy something on iTunes then download a better quality mp3. I did this with the most recent Behemoth and Dimmu Borgir albums - the iTunes quality sucked so I downloaded FLACs from Usenet, which are way better.
I recently gave GB£20 to Radiohead, not because I thought their ‘free to download’ album was worth that much, but because I downloaded their entire back catalogue the night before I bought it. Most of that has now been deleted
Filesharing directly causes me to buy more music. Without filesharing I would not have discovered 80% of the stuff I’ve bought over the last year.
No doubt a great many lawbreaking music thieves like me work exactly the same way.
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