How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 12

Bounie et al. conducted an anonymous online survey in two French graduate schools in order to examine the factors that influence the probability to increase/decrease CD purchases after acquiring MP3 files. The results originally published in a 2005 working paper suggest “(…) that there exist two populations of music consumers: people who sample music a lot (explorers) and those who do not sample (the pirates)” (Bounie et al. 2005: 1). This result indicates that music fans among students prefer to sample music and, therefore, their purchases of CDs tend to increase, whereas students with little interest in music use MP3 files as direct substitute for CDs. More details you can find here.