Try before they buy
A STUDY by two researchers at the University of London for the Canadian Government has found that people download songs from P2p sites because they want to hear them before buying or because they were not available in stores.
The study pours cold water on the claims by the music industry that P2P piracy was killing off CD music.
The researchers found that the the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.
The findings, were based on interviews with 2000 Canadians.
The Canadian study suggests file sharing is not the cause of the music industry's woe and is actually props up the flagging industry.
According to the
Sydney Morning Herald the study has been written off by the music industry.
One spokesperson was quoted as saying that it was not rocket science to work out that if you get your music for free, why would you go out and buy it.
Well one reason is because the sound quality is bad, there is no packaging and you can't listen to it on a decent stereo or in quadrophonics.
More
here.
The INQuirer