A new study in the Journal of Political Economy has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.
Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample. Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero.
Between studies like this, Jobs' recent letter about the 1,200 lb pink gorillaphant, and Tower Records demise, I believe we'll see the rate of pure digital adoption increase dramatically over the coming months.
As always, thanks to Ars for bringing this to my attention.
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