Ah, so now it's all settled. A new report in America reckons that illegal downloading of music does have a significant affect on record sales. Commissioned by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, the latest survey involved 412 students. They were asked about the albums they had bought recently, and those albums which they had downloaded illegally from P2P networks. Researchers reckon that students bought less albums when they had access to P2P networks, with an average decline in expenditure on music from $126 to $100.
Past reports on the real effects of downloading on record sales have been inconclusive of course. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reckoned about 15% of P2P users actually bought more music as a result of using the file sharing platforms, but added that two thirds of people cut back on record buying if they use illegal download services.
A report by Harvard and North Carolina universities, meanwhile, said the effect of high levels of file-swapping on record sales was "indistinguishable from zero".