CLONMEL -- I watch sprightly pensioners squeeze supermarket produce before they fill their baskets. On some Saturday afternoons, I watch the same old geezer eat a handful of grapes, munch on a scone, and peel a banana before choosing his cabbage. In my college environment, I listen to songs ripped by students from their personal CDs or from online environments. A handful of them have it perfected as a "Netflix Model" where they swap CDs over lunch.
All of these are patterns of consumer behaviour that have not changed since the birth of rock music. But for some reason, the RIAA doesn't get it. As expected, the recording industry is having fits with research released by two academicians.
"Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates," write Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These economists conclude that file sharing is not hurting record sales. The rigourous study analyses directly observed activity on file-sharing networks and music buying. They could find anecdotal support in Tipperary where the students with the biggest playlists have also purchased the most items from record shops.
John Schwartz -- "A Hereterical View of File Sharing"
Fergus Cassidy -- "Sympathy for the Devil" in The Sunday Tribune, April 4, 2004
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