p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Far from being the death of the corporate music industry, file sharing may be helping to keep it on life support, said p2pnet recently, quoting a study from the BI Norwegian School of Management with Norway.

People who, “download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don’t,” it said, according to The Guardian.

“Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed,” said the story.

That the news came from a Norwegian source was particularly poignant given the country had itself only just signed up as a corporate copyright cyber cop.

John C. Dvorak (right) also cites the study in  PC Magazine, saying when the original Napster was still going strong,  “a period in which there was no significant musical movement that would trigger any excitement in the business,” CD sales increased.

As Napster grew, sales increased, and as it was shut down, “you could see CD sales decline, and once they put the lid on open file-sharing, the industry went into a tailspin.”

Saying he never saw this as a coincidence, Dvorak continues »»»

The RIAA and the music industry in general blamed the tailspin on Napster and piracy, harping on the concept of “stealing.” The overlooked fact in all this was that with the advent of national radio syndicates and the niche programming that began to flourish in the ’90s, people were not easily introduced to new music. There were fewer ways to discover bands and music you liked so that you could go buy those CDs in the first place. This coincided with the demise of the disc jockey (a music nut who kept tabs on trends). The record industry was essentially doomed at this moment of change.

With its ability to show and share collections of music, Napster became the ersatz virtual DJ, letting you self-select bands and singers who appealed to your individual taste. You did this by looking at the collections of like-minded individuals using the system. And in many ways, except for the downloading time, it was more efficient than radio since you didn’t have to slog through commercials and could skip a track not to your liking.

“But,” he adds,  “apparently not a single person working at the decision-making levels of the recording industry understood the sociology or the mechanism — and that’s still the case.”

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p2pnet – File sharers Big Music’s best customers, April 21, 2009
The Guardian – Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music, April 21, 2009
signed up – Norway joins Sweden in anti-P2P move, April 20, 2009
PC Magazine – The RIAA Has Got to Stop, May 19, 2009