Latest study - file sharing has no impact on CD sales

[SUBMAN1]

Surprise surprise! Well not really since files that I have listened have always made me go out and buy the CD so that i can have the source, but maybe I am a rare apple?

Anyway, the point is, this study shows that file sharing has absolutely no effect on CD sales. Something i already knew, and my friends already know, but the RIAA doesn't or is not willing to admit. The RIAA also has two big issues - one is they are control freaks, and the other is they need an excuse for declining CD sales instead of blaming the crappy managed music they keep releasing. What happened to real artists anyway? I think the control freaks stamped them out.

Here is the abstract:

The music downloading phenomenon presents a unique opportunity to examine normative
influences on media consumption behavior. Downloaders face moral, legal, and ethical
quandaries that can be conceptualized as normative influences within the self-regulatory
mechanism of social cognitive theory. The music industry hopes to eliminate illegal file sharing
and to divert illegal downloaders to pay services by asserting normative influence
through selective prosecutions and public information campaigns. However the deficient
self-regulation of downloaders counters these efforts maintaining file sharing as a persistent
habit that defies attempts to establish normative control. The present research tests and
extends the social cognitive theory of downloading on a sample of college students. The expected
outcomes of downloading behavior and deficient self-regulation of that behavior
were found to be important determinantes of intentions to continue downloading. Consistent
with social cognitive theory but in contrast to the theory of planned behavior, it was
found that descriptive and prescriptive norms influenced deficient self-regulation but had
no direct impact on behavioral intentions. Downloading intentions also had no direct relationship
to either compact disc purchases or to subscription to online pay music services.

To read the full study, go here:
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf...59?cookieSet=1

-S