More research, and possibly more proof that the major labels should stop stressing over P2P and DRM and invest more time in honing their business models for the digital age. A new report in the Journal Of Political Economy, based on research done by Harvard University and the University of Kansas, claims that the real effect of P2P file sharing on record sales is "indistinguishable from zero".
Now, whether you buy the analysis behind that conclusion is up to you. It was reached by comparing record sale and illegal file sharing stats for the final four months of 2002. Researchers say that about 803 million CDs were sold in the US in 2002, which was about 80 million down on the previous year. But, they argue, based on stats of music being downloaded via P2P at that time, you can only attribute at the most 6 million of that shortfall to online piracy, meaning there were other much bigger factors at play regarding the slide in record sales at that time.
Now, you could argue that research based on 2002 stats isn't so relevant right now, given how fast things change in this digital age. But interestingly the academics reckon that illegal downloads impacted physical CD sales at that time by only 0.7%, while a Recording Industry Association Of America report from the time claimed the impact was 10%. Which means that if you trust the academics' research methods more than those employed by the US record industry (personally I'm a bit dubious about both, but don't let that put you off), then the major record labels have been investing a lot of energy into a business threat which never really existed.