The Counting Crows think BitTorrent is the new radio, and a far better way to serve fans. But an academic study just released by North Carolina State University flatly debunks that claim, at least as it relates to awareness and resulting sales. Because it’s not that BitTorrent doesn’t have some promotional power ― and even the ability to ultimately sell albums ― it’s just that traditional radio is far, far more powerful.
“These comparisons suggest that, while the file-sharing of an album has a positive eff ect on its sales, those eff ects are small relative to other promotional e fforts that aff ect music sales.”
As you might expect, old-school television is also far, far more powerful for the lucky artist. “More anecdotally, sales are a ffected by the so-called ‘Grammy lift’ that follows an artist’s appearance on the Grammy Awards show, including 6,000 additional sales for Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, 24,000 additional sales for Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More, and a record-breaking 730,000 additional sales for Adele’s 21.”
Comparisons aside, Hammond found no connection between BitTorrent piracy and album declines, and instead found these modest sales increases in many cases. “The question of interest here is whether an individual artist should expect sales to decline given wider pre-release availability of the album in file-sharing networks,” Hammond relayed.
“I fi nd that the answer is no.”
In terms of methodology, Hammond focused on roughly 1,000 albums, all of which had been leaked prior to their official street dates. And, he zeroed in on a private, music-specific torrent tracker with roughly 150,000 users, with heavy observation between May, 2010 and January, 2011. “The findings suggest that fi le-sharing of an album benefi ts its sales,” Hammond also noted.
Here’s the problem with this sort of study: if an album is popular, it’s generally popular across paid and free channels concurrently (see, the Beastie Boys). It’s a gigantic chicken-and-egg, and a recipe for spoiled data and half-baked conclusions. Which is why Hammond tried to focus on more contained, pre-release leaks involving a closed community. Hammond declined to specify the name of this ‘Anonymous Private Tracker,’ but did narrow it to ‘OiNK’s closest descendant.’
“I don’t fi nd any evidence of a negative e ffect in any specification, using any instrument.”
The complete study is here. –Digital Music News
