Study: File Sharing Promotes Record Sales

Communications Today, May 7, 2002

A new study from Jupiter Media Metrix has produced results that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. According to the study, online file-swapping, a technology that allows Internet users to download and copy CD recordings, may actually increase sales of record albums.

The study found that Internet users who often download illegal files from so-called "peer-to-peer" (P2P) services like KaZaa and Morpheus are 75 percent more likely to boost their music-spending levels than the average Internet user. Thirty-four percent of P2P network users said they increased their music spending after they used the services, while only 19 percent of music fans on the Internet who don't use such services said the same thing.

The findings stand in stark contrast to charges by the recording industry that online piracy slows album sales. In fact, a recent study underwritten by the Recording Industry Association of America produced -- unsurprisingly --results that were exactly opposite of those found in the Jupiter study.