Dutch government study: net effect of P2P use is positive
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
"The music industry is shrinking, hard copy sales are decreasing faster than online sales are growing. Innovation of businessmodel is urgent. Income for artists is moving towards liveconcerts, merchandise ans sponsorship. In the future it seems impossible to run a company solely on music recordings."
"The movie industry is still growing, although rentals are in steep decline. Future growth in Internet bandwidth may lead to decline eventually. Because of the inherent character of movies (people tend to view them once), file sharing may prove critical. The movie industry must not ignore this."
"The games industry is growing fast; at least in the console market. PC sales are stagnating. File sharing is less of a threat here. Besides that, the games industry is inherently more innovative and seeks out online solutions."
"The total market of music, film and games is relatively constant, but music is going down while games are going up."
Here is a translation of table 5-3:
"Possible effects of downloading on the purchase of cd's, films and related merchandise."
Positive:
1. Downloading brings consumers in touch with content (music, films, games) which creates (more) demand; the so-called "sampling-effect" (Shapiro & Varian 1999; Liebowitz 2006)
2. File sharing (the technique) enables consumer to bundle their demands and this increases their demands.
3. Downloading increases the willingness to pay for and the demand for concerts and related merchandise (complementary demand).
4. Downloading increases popularity of products and creates demand with willingness to pay. (network effect).
Neutral:
5. Downloading supplies consumers which were unwilling to pay (would not have payed).
6. Downloading supplies consumers who where not met in their demands by producers. (e.g. movies for the iPod)
Negative:
7. Downloading replaces purchase of music, dvd's, games or theater tickets. (substitution)
8. Downloading delays purchase, resulting in a lower price for content.
9. Sampling leads to loss of demand by preventing bad buys.
Preventing bad buys certainly leads to greater satisfaction with the music purchased. The happier that I am with a product, the more that I buy. Then again, I'm not Dutch.