IP Outreach Research > IP Crime
Reference
| Title: | Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing? |
| Author: | Sudip Bhattacharjee and Ram D Gopal [University of Connecticut], G Lawrence Sanders [State University of New York at Buffalo] |
| Source: | Journal of Business Ethics 79, no. 3: 1503-1533 |
| Year: | 2006 |
Details
| Subject/Type: | Piracy |
| Focus: | Music |
| Country/Territory: | United States of America |
| Objective: | To study potential consumer benefits from digital music sampling technologies, the effect of such technologies on consumer purchasing and pirating behaviour, and the impact of new sampling technologies on sales of music "superstars". |
| Sample: | 200 college students |
| Methodology: | Questionnaire, Billboard ranking charts tracking |
Main Findings
The study finds that decreasing sampling costs lead more potential consumers to sample unknown music items (for unknown music, decreasing the sampling cost increases sampling). Lower sampling costs also lead more consumers to buy the music items that they have sampled (for unknown music, decreasing the sampling cost leads more samplers to buy). In short, with online sampling and downloading, the total cost of music evaluation and acquisition decreases, which will propel more consumers to purchase music. According to the authors, this means that the music industry can potentially reverse the effects of online piracy by providing more legal and efficient sampling techniques to consumers, taking the form of easily searchable indexes of music items, fast download access to music items in different secure formats, provisions of posting consumer review on items, creation of fan club sites within the search portal, and so forth.
The study also finds that the existing superstar phenomenon is threatened by the advent of online music sampling: a greater proportion of sampling of superstar music leads to piracy, and, less expensive sampling makes consumers aware of more new music they like, leading to more artists and albums being ranked on the charts. Decreasing superstar sales will negatively affect their status. Online music sharing technologies thus threaten some superstars and favour other less known artists.
[Date Added: Jan 20, 2009 ]