Good paper on downloads and music sales

[M Holmes]

Longish, but interesting:

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

Short version: Sample of one ten thousandth of all US downloads in 17
weeks drawn against Neilsen data for album sales.  Time variance work
done against German holidays (US fans download a lot from Germany and
track availability varies depending on whether German kids are at uni or
at home) etc to see how sales correlate with downloads. Also variability
across genres drawn agaist net congestion numbers.

The results were that any effect is down there with the noise. If
there's an overall effect it's one lost album sale per 5000 downloads
from the album (or 2 million albums per year, which is well short of the
139 million albums per year sales loss in the US industry).

Interestingly, they conclude that (i there's an effect) then for every
150 downloads of a popular album (top quartile of the sample) there's a
gain of an album sale. Since this is where the record companies actually
make their money, they really oght to be in favour of downloading.

The paper also confirms that airplay on radio and MTV, and touring, does
improve album sales.

FoFP