How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 15

In his 2009 working paper, Leung constructed a dataset from 884 undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota to demonstrate that music file sharing does hurt record sales. However, music file sharing contributes approximately 20% to iPod sales. How the author came to these results by a conjoint analysis is further discussed below.

How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 14

In his 2006 working paper Lee investigated how price and free music availability jointly affect the consumer’s willingness to buy and how price and non-price factors (rating of singers, genre preferences, number of songs on CDs, and music consumption style) change the “free” vs. “non-free” Internet availability conditions. The results of a survey of about 500 students of Korea University in Seoul indicate that there is a weak interaction of CD prices and free music availability, whereas in the non-free Internet availability situation price has a significant effect on consumer purchasing patterns for some CDs. More can be read here:

How Bad Is Music File Sharing? – Part 13

Rob/Waldfogel’s article in the Journal of Law and Economics is based on a 2004 working paper entitled “Piracy on the High C’s. Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students”.  The authors used a survey-based dataset of music downloading and purchases of 8,200 albums by 412 college students. The repondents were asked whether they download more and buy fewer albums. The authors document “(…) that downloading reduces music purchases, by roughly one fifth of a sale for each recent download and possibly much more” (Rob and Waldfogel 2004: 29). The conservative estimates indicate that “(…) downloading reduced purchases by individuals in the sample by about 10 percent during 2003”. (Rob and Waldfogel 2004: 29)