Is there any evidence that file-sharing has actually damaged CD sales?
The facts are far murkier than the record industry likes to assert. “The unauthorised distribution of music over the internet … has already had an enormous effect on music sales,” the BPI declares. And music retailing is certainly in decline: CD sales have fallen by 25% since 1999. But is file-sharing to blame? Some surveys seem to suggest that it is. According to one, Americans who had downloaded more than 100 files bought 61% fewer CDs from one year to the next. In a Canadian study, 30% of people who said they had bought fewer CDs in the past year admitted, without being prompted, that file-sharing was one of the reasons. But then, last year, two US economists – studying actual downloads, instead of survey responses – provoked fury from the industry with a statistical analysis that found a negligible impact. “Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero,” concluded Felix Oberholzer, a Harvard Business School professor, and Carolina academic K
