Liebowitz tried to provide theoretical evidence in several papers (2002, 2003, 2005) that there is negative impact of P2P file sharing on record sales. The most elabatored paper is his article in the Journal of Law and Economics, which fused earlier research on this topic (Liebowitz 2006). Liebowitz’s arguments are based on microeconomic theory and…

Liebowitz’s article “Testing File-Sharing’s Impact on Music Album Sales in Cities” was available as an extended working paper version in 2008 (Liebowitz 2008a), before it was published in the journal Management Science in the same year (Liebowitz 2008b). However, it was originally made available as a working paper in September 2005 (Liebowitz 2005) and in a revised version…

Boorstin (2004) tested the causality between Internet access and CD sales over the years 1998, 2000, and 2001 using an economic model based on 99 U.S. metropolitan areas. Since Boostin could not directly measure Internet “piracy”, he broke down “(…) the population into different age groups in order to see how Internet access changes the…

At the first “Vienna Music Business Research Days” from June 9-10, 2010 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, economists and music professionals focused on music file sharing as well as on content flat rate models (“cultural” flat rate). In workshops, key notes and panel discussions recent research results were presented and controversially…

In his working paper entitled “On-line Piracy and Recorded Music Sales”, David Blackburn used a dataset combining weekly album sales data from Nielsen SoundScan with data of file sharing activity on the 5 largest sharing networks in the U.S. (Kazaa, Grokster, eDonkey, iMesh, and Overnet) provided by BigChampagne over more than 60 weeks between September…

The Dutch study is based on a representative survey of 1,500 Dutch internet users, capturing their behavior and motives in downloading music, films and games, but it also investigated their purchasing behavior related to music, DVDs and games. Although the authors found out that music producers and publishers suffered revenue losses due to file sharing of…

In April 2010 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report to the Committee of Judiciary of the U.S. Senate as well as House of Representatives entitled “Intellectual Property. Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods“. Although the report is foced on counterfeiting it also deals with the…

The British alternative rock band Radiohead caused a sensation when they announced on their website on October 1, 2007 that the new album In Rainbows was completed and would be released in 10 days for free. Fans were instructed to obtain a registration code in order to download the new album in MP3-format. Music consumers…

Filesharing is made primarily responsible for the decline in sales in the phonographic industry, especially in the CD segment (see the current IFPI Digital Music Report). However, serious research on filesharing behavior (see Huygen et al 2009, Andersen/Frenz 2007, Oberholzer-Gee/Strumpf 2007 (working-paper March 2004), Blackburn 2004) shows that filesharing use does not necessarily have a negative…

The death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009 triggered a sales boom for his music. The American industry magazine Billboard published Soundscan sales figures for his albums the week after the “King of Pop’s” death, showing three of his albums occupying the top positions in the U.S.-album-charts and five more of his albums entering…

The economic crisis exacerbates the recession in the music industry. Recorded music sales have been in sharply decline for years. Digital music offerings on the Internet and via mobile phone cannot compensate for the losses. One reason: The wrong licensing policies of the record labels. The music industry cannot escape the general economic and financial…

In this blog the current developments in the music business/industry are highlighted and commented from a scientific perspective. All interested parties are invited to contribute to.