New report shows file-sharing does not harm music industry at least in Canada

It is good for everybody, industry or music lovers, to see this kind of studies. It can only be good for those open-minded people. A recently released report by University of London for Industry Canada studies the impact of file sharing on the music industries.

Of course, there are always people who refutes this with no publication of solid data. That's human nature. In this world, it is either put up or shut up. Comments like this:

It's not rocket science to work out that if you get your music for free, why would you go out and buy it.

I have also reported else where musician's view towards this issue and they have not found that file-sharing tracks is hurting their income as their income does not derive from CD sales. Rather, their main source of income is from concerts and live performance. This kind of music sharing can be good for their as kind of advertising.

Many predicts the introduction of eBook, electronic libraries, such as 24X7 and O'Reilly Library, and the Internet spells the death knell for physical books - why would anyone want to buy a physical book when one could read it mostly free? The same argument as presented above. It is interesting to know that sales figures released and available on Google have disappointed these doom-sayers and the contrary actually has happened.

It is an interesting finding:

In the aggregate, we are unable to discover any direct relationship between P2P filesharing and CD purchases in Canada. The analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file-sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole.
[...]
However, our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing.
[...]
we find some indirect evidence that price influences CD purchasing, as the variable capturing the motivation to engage in P2P file-sharing because of the perception that CDs were too costly was negatively associated with CD purchases.