An NYT article claiming to have a heretical view of file sharing, in other words disagreeing with the RIAA. I’ve known this for years; I’ve been downloading music since 1998, or maybe 1999, back when it use to bring my Pentium 90 to its knees.
The industry response, titled “Downloading Hurts Sales,” concludes: “If file sharing has no negative impact on the purchasing patterns of the top selling records, how do you account for the fact that, according to SoundScan, the decrease of Top 10 selling albums in each of the last four years is: 2000, 60 million units; 2001, 40 million units; 2002, 34 million units; 2003, 33 million units?”
I remember learning, “Correlation does not causation make,” in a first year psychology class. Maybe the music sucked, maybe the economy was bad, hmm… think about it some more and then try to tell me that every album I’ve bought in the last 6 years hasn’t been influenced by mp3s or live shows.