It is dizzying. Competing studies that measure the effect of music downloading on CD sales are interesting, but only
academically. They have been conducted so frequently in the last five years, and with such disparate results, that one
cannot take their conclusions seriously except to say that nobody really knows what's going on. Anyway, here's
another one.
(Here is the PDF report itself.) Conducted by two
professors at the University of Pennsylvania, it somewhat supports the RIAA position that downloading damages CD sales,
though not as much or as simply as the RIAA thinks. (The RIAA site is not gloating
over the study, so perhaps it disdains the results as not damning enough.)
The U. Penn study focuses on the behavior of over 400 students, measuring not only their purchases and free
acquisitions, but their subjective valuations of free music vs. paid music. It concludes that an album download
displaces one-fifth of a CD sale; in other words, five album downloads displace one sale. The study is far more
scientific than the ragged mockeries put out by the RIAA. P2P.net makes the
following observations of the connection between U. Penn and the music industry:
"Penn was the first major US university to enthusiastically enter into the entertainment industry's scheme to turn American institutions of higher learning into combined record label police and sales and marketing units.
Penn presidents Graham Spanier serves alongside RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) president Cary Sherman as co-chairman of Hollywood's Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities.
Barry K. Robinson, the RIAA's senior counsel for corporate affairs who deals with "day-to-day" legal matters for the association, including trademark violations, is a Penn State trustee.
And there are other interesting connections between Penn and the entertainment industry.
The report comes at a time when Big Music record label cartel claims that its legal war against file sharers is significantly reducing downloads are being regularly debunked, and the cartel's own figures show sales are very healthy indeed, its assertions to the contrary notwithstanding."
