The RIAA and MPAA has made many strives to eliminate piracy. With the fall of digital “piracy catalysts” like Megaupload and federal shutdown of popular music sites they fight to preserve sales of their respective industries. But is piracy a good thing or bad thing? Check out this interesting study after the jump which answers that question.
A recent study found that contrary to arguments repeatedly posed by major record labels — and perhaps contrary to logic as well — BitTorrent piracy has a direct correlation to increased album sales. Between May 2010 and January 2011, North Carolina State University assistant professor Robert Hammond tracked BitTorrent download statistics for new albums ahead of their releases. He then compared his data to music sales figures and found what he believes to be a connection. â€I isolate the causal eff ect of file sharing of an album on its sales by exploiting exogenous variation in how widely available the album was prior to its official release date,†Hammond wrote in his paper. “The findings suggest that fi le sharing of an album benefi ts its sales. I don’t fi nd any evidence of a negative e ffect in any specification, using any instrument.†Of course, the case may simply be that popular music is popular music; whether consumers steal it or buy it, massive marketing budgets help ensure that people are exposed to labels’ premier acts as much as possible, thus promoting demand.
Read the study here. It is kind of lengthy lol.
