Downloading music is nowhere near as bad as suggested

Finally what I've been saying for months has been confirmed.

"File sharing has no effect on CD sales", a pair of US academics have claimed.

They say that it takes 5,000 downloads to reduce album sales by just one single copy. They go futher and suggest file-sharing has actually slowed down the decline rate of sales.

they also said "most people who shared files appear to be individuals who would not have bought the albums that they downloaded". the professors suggest we look to other reasons for the decline. Sales, they say, are not lost to downloads since most download are made of songs music fans would not buy anyway. They also point to a similar large decline in LP sales during the late 1970s and early 1980s - a trend that prompted the music industry's 'home taping is killing music' campaign.

They sum up:
"Movies, software and video games are actively downloaded, and yet these industries have continued to grow since the advent of file sharing," Reasons for the decline in music sales include, they suggest, "poor macroeconomic conditions, a reduction in the number of album releases, growing competition from other forms of entertainment such as video games and DVDs - video game graphics have improved and the price of DVD players and movies have sharply fallen - a reduction in music variety stemming from the large consolidation in radio along with the rise of independent promoter fees to gain airplay".