Originally posted by: Johnboy3434

Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Yes, this P2P is really killing the music industry:
Two University of London researchers found no direct link between use of songs downloaded off P2P networks and the sale of CDs, but found that heavy P2P users are more likely to go out and buy CDs (LINK).

*raises eyebrow*

There's got to be a catch. It's too good to be true. This would be like my high school teachers saying the best way to avoid an STD is to have more wanton sex. In other words: I'm certainly not complaining, but it just doesn't seem logical.

People who regularly use P2P networking are exposed to artists that they would never be exposed to otherwise, and their musical worldview opens considerably. P2P brings more new music to people. A lot of people who use P2P use it as a sort of search engine or browsing tool for new kinds of music because they are really into music, and not just because they are cheap. In my experience this couldn't be truer--were it not for P2P I would have half the CD collection I currently have.

The catch is that major labels and artists get hit. Britney Spears suffers, Justin Timberlake suffers and most Top-10 artists suffer. Most people who download their music don't buy their CD's, go to their concerts, or support them financially in any way. But these people are the least harmed by this process because the record labels still make hundreds of millions of dollars and these artists' music is on the radio for free anyway. So, sort of ironically, there is very little harm actually done, preportionally speaking. On the other hand, bands that have more serious followings--a lot of rock bands for example--have downloaders go out and buy their CD's because listeners want more than just the singles and because there is a more personal relationship that entails supporting the band. Non-radio bands, which, lets face it, comprises about 50% of the music in cyberspace, suffer virtually no loses at all, because the only way people hear their music is often through P2P and internet radio, thus even if only 1 out of every 20 downloaders buys something from them, thats still a gain because they wouldn't have had that single purchase anyway. These artists don't make any money from CD sales anyway--in fact no artists really does. CD sales benefit mostly the record label. Thus, when someone downloads a song or an album and discovers a new band they like, they are likely to go to their concerts, and thats where the vast, vast majority or artist income comes from. So, while in a worst case scenario they may lose some CD sales to downloading it actually becomes a huge, huge gain because the amount of new listeners and fans they inherit more than makes up for the difference.

And again, I'm quite certain that CD sales have increased exponentially since P2P became common. This I credit directly to P2P, for exposing people to more music and for making music in general more popular.