Don’t Blame Downloads for Sagging CD Sales
It’s become music-industry dogma that Internet file sharing is destroying the retail music business. But a statistical study unveiled on March 29 by the Harvard Business School finds no such connection. As numerous newspapers and websites are reporting this week, Harvard researcher Felix Oberholzer-Gee and colleague Koleman Strumpf at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, tracked downloads of songs on 680 popular albums over a 17-week period in the fall of 2002, then compared this data to record-store sales of the same albums. They found a correlation that was “statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
That result is already provoking rejoinders from music companies, who have long used Internet piracy as an all-purpose scapegoat for falling music sales. But as John Schwartz points out in today’s New York Times, “Critics of the industry’s stance have long suggested that other factors might be contributing to the drop in sales, including a slow economy, fewer new releases and a consolidation of radio networks that has resulted in less variety on the airwaves.”
Download the HBS study here.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets
When wastewater surveillance turns into a hunt for a single infected individual, the ethics get tricky.
The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.
Plug-in hybrids are often sold as a transition to EVs, but new data from Europe shows we’re still underestimating the emissions they produce.
Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch
Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.