Downloading pirated music from the Internet has had almost no effect on real world sales, say researchers from Harvard Business School and the the University of North Carolina.
Their recent report effectively discredits record executives who claimed that the progressive slump in music sales can be linked to the rise in online piracy.
The researchers studied the most heavily downloaded songs to determine if there was a measurable drop in legitimate sales. They discovered that filesharing actually increases sales for popular albums - those that sell more than 600,000 copies. They found that for every 150 illegal downloads, legitimate CD sales of that album are increased by one copy. More Download the whole paper here
