Music sharers are the good guys: the proof

[andygates]

There's a Canadian government report on BoingBoing which seems to prove what I've been saying all along:

• Music sharers buy more music than average ("one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year").
• Home ripping is not killing music ("no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative").

In other words, the people who are ripping and sharing stuff are actually the good guys, and even if they weren't, their transgressions have no impact at all on the overall market.  Music industry, please take note and back the hell off.  We love music.  We buy music.  We share it with our friends.  Now rein in the attack dogs and get back to finding some cool artists.

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I am a naughty girl and use Pandora even though I'm not in the US. My music acquisitions have rocketed since then as I hunt the globe for CDs by artists I'd never have heard of otherwise (like Forty Foot Echo or Toad The Wet Sprocket). Overall I'm probably not buying any more music in terms of volume, but I'm buying music by artists I wouldn't otherwise have known about.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Pandora good. Pandora comes back in my life when I change ISP to an unlimited package this afternoon. Mmm :)

Packaged music is so expensive that freebies are the only way I can try out weird stuff. And a lot of it still sucks, but enough is excellent that I go buy it.

Copyright infringement people seem to have trouble seeing the big picture.