This Week in the Mercury

Books

Mormon Humdrum

An LDS Mission Is as Exciting as It Sounds

Film

Gran Toretto

The Power and the Glory of Fast & Furious 6

Archives

RSS Feed

Twitter

End Hits Tip?

End Hits

« Tonight in Music: Grimes and Bob Dy… | End Hits Jazzy Jazz News! »

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Let's Talk About... Study: "Illegal" File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music

Posted by Andrew R Tonry on Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 1:09 AM

Something worth considering before the music industry—or any other creative endeavor—goes on suing their own customers: users of P2P file-sharing networks buy 30% more music than folks who don't share songs online.

Or so says The American Assembly, a think tank tied to Columbia University.

U.S. P2P users have larger collections than non-P2P users (roughly 37% more). And predictably, most of the difference comes from higher levels of ‘downloading for free’ and ‘copying from friends/family.’

But some of it also comes from significantly higher legal purchases of digital music than their non-P2P using peers–around 30% higher among US P2P users. Our data is quite clear on this point and lines up with numerous other studies: The biggest music pirates are also the biggest spenders on recorded music.

H/T: Torrent Freak