Study finds no big link between P2P pirates and lower music sales

Some Danish folks at the University of Amsterdam have come up with some interesting conclusions on file sharers. Like some other studies not sponsored by the music industry, the results of the study did not show a strong link between decreased music sales and P2P users: "Only part of the decline in music sales can be attributed to file sharing. Despite the losses for the music industry, the increased accessibility of culture renders the overall welfare effects of file sharing robustly positive," said Professor Nico van Eijk.

Yes -- you read that last part correct. van Eijk's study actually found that the most frequent Dutch P2P users were actually some of the biggest buyers of music. The people who pirated music actually averaged about as much cash spent on music than the people that didn't know their peer from peer. And the heavy P2P users spent, on average, more money seeing concerts (that they heard about through online music downloads) and buying the merchandise of their favorite bands than non-P2P users. "When it comes to attending concerts, and expenses on DVDs and games, file sharers are the industry's largest customers," concluded the study.

Unfortunately for the big record labels, they do not profit as much from concert tickets and band merchandise as they do from album sales, generally speaking. Nonetheless, it still seems a bit odd that their lobbyists are going great lengths to pass 'three strikes' rules disconnecting folks from the Internet for suspicion of P2P piracy, such as recently passed in New Zealand, and that they are negotiating international trade treaties not revealed to the public, such as ACTA, which aim to hold ISPs accountable for piracy, when the facts don't necessarily support their one-sided conclusions.