New Report: File-sharing Makes Popular Music Acts More Popular
A recent study commissioned by royalties body PRS reveals that illegal file sharing only increases the popularity of already popular musicians, BBC News reports.
Behind the research are PRS chief economist Will Page and media-tracking firm Big Champagne chief Eric Garland and through it they tried to establish if these usage patterns can be translated into any lessons for how music is currently marketed and sold.
"If you offer people more choice, and help them make that choice, they will take that choice,” wrote Page and Garland, saying how the so-called Long Tail theory works.
They added that "after taking into account some geographic differences, the top of the many music charts, from licensed and unlicensed venues, are markedly similar.”
So, according to Page and Garland when it comes to ‘promoting’ artists or songs file-sharing sites and the music industry are on the same wavelength, serving mainly to bring even more popularity to those already popular. The report, however, shows that the free downloads allowed by p2p file-sharing networks sometimes account for people listening to bands and artists unknown to them up to that point.
As expected by many, on sites and music services where music fans are charged, only music that those listeners already knew (and were sure they wanted) was downloaded.
Another fact pointed out by the study is the failure of legal actions such as the trial against The Pirate Bay or other similar sites to deter internet piracy.
