R ecent technological and market forces have profoundly impacted the music industry. Emphasizing threats from peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies, the industry continues to seek sanctions against individuals who offer a significant number of songs for others to copy. Combining data on the performance of music albums on the Billboard charts with file sharing data from a popular network, we assess the impact of recent developments related to the music industry on survival of music albums on the charts and evaluate the specific impact of P2P sharing on an album's survival on the charts. In the post-P2P era, we find significantly reduced chart survival except for those albums that debut high on the charts. In addition, superstars and female artists continue to exhibit enhanced survival. Finally, we observe a narrowing of the advantage held by major labels. The second phase of our study isolates the impact of file sharing on album survival. We find that, although sharing does not hurt the survival of top-ranked albums, it does have a negative impact on low-ranked albums. These results point to increased risk from rapid information sharing for all but the "cream of the crop."

The music industry has repeatedly expressed concerns over potentially devastating impacts of online music sharing. Initial attempts to control online file sharing have been primarily through consumer education and legal action against the operators of networks that facilitated file sharing. Recent legal action against individual file sharers marked an unprecedented shift in the industry's strategy. The focus now is on wellpublicized legal threats and actions on a relatively small group of individuals to discourage overall music file sharing. To determine the resulting impact of these legal threats, we passively tracked online file-sharing behavior of over 2,000 individuals. We found that individuals who share a substantial number of music files react to legal threats differently from those who share a lesser number of files. Importantly, our analysis indicates that even after these legal threats and the resulting lowered levels of file sharing, the availability of music files on these networks remains substantial.

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The popularity of online music sharing networks has attracted interest from the music industry, artists, consumer advocacy performance of music albums. The relative market performance of music albums is gauged using the list of top 100 albums on the weekly Billboard charts. The P2P sharing data gathered is longitudinal, spanning a period of 8 weeks. We also identify and track data for 47 upcoming album releases providing pre and post release comparisons of sharing activity. We offer four main findings:(1) significant piracy opportunity and activity were observed; (2) the level of sharing opportunities are related to albums' relative chart positions; (3) there is evidence of both bpre purchase samplingQ piracy and blost salesQ piracy; and, (4) sharing activity levels provide leading indicators of direction of movement of albums on the Billboard charts.Points (3) and (4) have particular implications for music marketing and promotion. groups, the popular press, and government legislative and regulatory entities. P2P networks have become lightning rods for debates on intellectual property rights and music market fates. Yet, to date, little has been based on actual observed activity on online sharing networks. Here we report on an initial P2P network data gathering and analysis endeavor and relate it to market Freed was a music bpoint manQ. He is credited with being the first to coin the term brockn-rollQ. He was also the first to take a fall in the famed