
 BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds - mrsebastian
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-boosts-music-sales-study-finds-120517/
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Mahh
This reads like a post that exists just so that people pirating music can give
themselves an excuse to keep doing so.

I'd be interested in seeing the process that Hammond took to establish this
relationship between pre release piracy and album sales. It says causal, but
it seems like you can't truly control for all of the variables when you're
dealing with phenomena in society.

One thing that sort of makes me itch is that the reported benefit of a one
month in advance leak is a value rather than a ratio. It seems like a figure
like that lets weight ruin the measure -- an album that was popular anyway
will weight heavily when it comes down to the expected value.

~~~
mohsen
I'm not sure about this study, but there are cases where 'illegal' downloads
have actually helped the producer of the product have better sales. When
Radiohead came out Kid A the reviews considered the album "Just Awful"[1]. And
I think that they never had any music videos or singles for the album, but a
leak before the official release of the album gave people a chance to give the
album a real shot. They liked it and they bought it. Kid A was Radioheads
first release that became number one in the US and it also went platinum in
the UK.

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,,371289,00.h...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,,371289,00.html)

~~~
res0nat0r
The reason it went number one is because it was a new album from Radiohead.
Also people wouldn't have given it a real shot after the official release
date?

~~~
mohsen
Actually Kid A was the first album that made almost a genre change, which is
why people considered it 'awful' in the first place: they were expecting the
same old Radiohead and they got something completely different. So yes, had
they released an album similar to the previous three, I would agree with you,
but what they did was quiet risky and the free downloads allowed people to
give it a chance.

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jstanley
I find it more likely that good songs are both pirated more and bought more,
rather than that the piracy increases the sales. Correlation, not causation.

~~~
mistercow
From the paper, which apparently nobody here actually bothered to skim:

> To study this phenomenon, I must overcome the fact that ﬁle sharing is
> endogenous in its determination of an album’s sales because an album that is
> popular in ﬁle-sharing networks will also be popular in retail markets. This
> occurs because ﬁle-sharing and retail demand are both driven by unobserved
> album quality. To address this endogeneity, I exploit exogenous variation
> inhow widely available an album was prior to its oﬃcial release date. An
> album’s ease of availability in ﬁle-sharing networks is positively
> correlated with the number of times that it is downloaded because
> availability determines the supply of the album in ﬁle-sharing networks.
> Availability is not independently correlated with an album’s popularity in
> retail markets because pre-release ﬁlesharing is driven by leaks, which are
> “crimes of opportunity” that occur at some stage of the production or album
> marketing process (Williams, 2009).

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jiggy2011
I'm not quite sure I understand the statistics here, seems to me that they are
basically saying "stuff that is popular with pirates pre-release is also
popular for purchase post-release" which is not exactly a revelation.

It also doesn't seem to account for total revenue rather than just total
sales.

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runn1ng
It is on torrentfreak.

Expecting this site to be fair and balanced is like expecting the same from
RIAA website.

~~~
cnbeuiwx
Nothing is fair and balanced. Isnt that a Fox News expression by the way? They
are mocking the viewers but they dont even understand it. :)

~~~
runn1ng
yeah, but a news on riaa website won't get to the frontpage of hackernews.

~~~
beagle3
but it does get on the every mainstream media outlet. And on the lawmakers'
desk.

~~~
cobrausn
We should be combating spin with facts, not more spin. Otherwise you are part
of the problem.

~~~
freshhawk
I'm not saying I like this, but I find it to be true:

You are only right if being moral and ethical is more important than actually
effecting change. Experience turns people into straussians
([http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/stephen-
harper-...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/stephen-harper-the-
last-straussian/article1710880/) (it's about the Canadian PM but has a
wonderfully concise description of the Straussian philosophy)).

Basically you can try and teach the general public how to think so that you
can then convince them with facts or you can just be better at spin. One is
practically impossible, the other is always some level of evil.

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taylorlb
The headline is a bit misleading for what is actually a somewhat interesting
study on the effect of leaks on album sales (rather than post-release piracy
on music sales in general). I've long believed that a leak of a great album
can help generate buzz and ultimately sales for a new record since the people
who would be most likely to evangelize the record would also be the same
people who would be most excited to download it pre-release. It goes both ways
though, a leak that exposes a record as being sub-par pre-release can have a
devastating effect.

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Rudism
I sometimes wonder if this whole thing isn't sort of a catch-22 for the record
labels. It seems somewhat intuitive that greater piracy/sharing would lead to
more exposure and more sales, but how many of those sales are driven by people
who use file sharing as a means of music discovery, then purchase their
favorites out of guilt? If the record labels acquiesce and begin to embrace
file sharing as another method of exposure, that guilt-factor would evaporate
because now torrenting isn't "wrong" anymore, thus eliminating those increased
sales.

~~~
DanBC
I don't buy things after torrenting because I feel guilty for torrenting. I
buy things after torrenting because I like those things. If I dislike those
things I delete them and don't buy them.

~~~
tripzilch
Additionally I make sure that the money I pay goes as directly as possible to
the record label and/or artist.

Usually the music I find worth buying is from smaller labels or independent
artists, and I really wonder how any money I could pay to, say, Spotify would
hypothetically find its way to them.

~~~
DanBC
Yes. Sometimes music isn't easily available, and in those cases I'd try to buy
modern versions or merch.

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Tycho
Hmm, but did they get bigger sales because they were leaked? Or did they get
leaked because they were in more demand in the first place?

Also it doesn't really matter because the core of the argument will always be
individual rights and control of intellectual property.

~~~
mistercow
>Also it doesn't really matter because the core of the argument will always be
individual rights and control of intellectual property.

Not really. That may be the core of the argument for the idealists, but the
core of the argument for the pragmatic is "harm to the economy", and the core
of the argument for the politicians is "appeasing those wealthy campaign
donors". Individual rights have very little to do with modern American
government.

------
paulhauggis
You also can't discount the fact that when Napster came out, music sales as a
whole dropped like a rock. I don't think I knew anyone that bought music after
this.

Anything digital (like movies, music, or software) is only as valuable as what
people are willing to pay. Look at the iPhone apps market. Because most apps
are under $10, you will have a hard time selling an app above this price
point.

The same thing will happen if the record industry embraces piracy. People will
just expect to get it for free from then on. It will be very difficult to
convince them otherwise.

It's difficult for me to respect a community that feels entitled to someone
else's hard work (and without their permission).

If they really want to make a difference, compete with the record labels.
Create a record label with signed artists that gives their music out for free
on the torrent networks.

I know this will never happen because it takes too much discipline and hard
work. The community also doesn't really care about the artist. If they did,
they would have come up with some sort of solution for artists to make a
living in the past 12 years (Napster launched in '99).

Until They can show me otherwise, I feel that the entire point of the
community is so they can get things for free.

~~~
icebraining
_You also can't discount the fact that when Napster came out, music sales as a
whole dropped like a rock._

By "dropping like a rock", you mean the 5% and 6.9% in 2000 and 2001,
respectively?

 _If they really want to make a difference, compete with the record labels.
Create a record label with signed artists that gives their music out for free
on the torrent networks.

I know this will never happen because it takes too much discipline and hard
work._

Yes, record labels that give music out for free "will never happen":
<http://creativecommons.org/record-labels>

_The community also doesn't really care about the artist. If they did, they
would have come up with some sort of solution for artists to make a living in
the past 12 years (Napster launched in '99)._

It already exists. In the UK, for example, artists revenue has been rising
steadily:
[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1PEuVy75dqs/Txt6vy4ZlmI/AAAAAAAAAD...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1PEuVy75dqs/Txt6vy4ZlmI/AAAAAAAAAD4/EEejctW0bW4/s1600/screenshot-11.png)

Album sales are not the only way they make money.

~~~
paulhauggis
"By "dropping like a rock", you mean the 5% and 6.9% in 2000 and 2001,
respectively?"

hmm..what happened to all of the independent music stores? Between 2000 and
now..they pretty much all went out of business...because...people aren't
buying music anymore.

"Yes, record labels that give music out for free "will never happen""

Did you even read what I wrote?

"Album sales are not the only way they make money."

This is the entitlement I was talking about. This isn't for you to say. If you
don't like their music, don't buy it (or download it). If the artist wants to
give it out for free, they can.

The same people that hate the record industry because they think it's somehow
propping up a dying business model..love the unions..when they are doing the
exact same thing.

We could have automated many of the assembly line jobs in the US auto industry
(like Japan), but the Unions are preventing it and forcing companies to pay
ridiculous wages (which is why they pretty much went bankrupt). If you want me
to feel sorry for the jobs lost, I don't.

Nobody feels sorry for the jobs lost when software, music, and or movies are
pirated.

~~~
parbo
Independent music stores were killed by iTunes Music Store.

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J3L2404
I would like to thank pg for inviting the barrage of these stories and the
type of users it brings to HN. Kill Hollywood? You might as well have Henry
Ford saying 'Kill Horses'. When a viable alternative exists it will gradually
replace the labels. Just like every other industry.

