Whatever happened to payola? An empirical analysis of online music sharing

Abstract

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

The Effect of Digital Sharing Technologies on Music Markets: A Survival Analysis of Albums on Ranking Charts

“…But there is an opposing view arguing that P2P systems sig nificantly enhance the ability of users to sample and experience songs. Digital technologies have undoubt edly made information sharing and sampling eas ier 1 (Bakos et al 1999, Barua et al 2001, Brynjolfsson and Smith 2000, Bhattacharjee et al 2006a) and less costly (Cunningham et al 2004, Gopal et al 2004) for individuals. Consumers' increased exposure to music, made possible by P2P systems, also has potential ben efits to the music industry.…”

The Internet and DSS: massive, real-time data availability is changing the DSS landscape

“…The authors took care to ensure that each application captured the information without downloading any copyrighted content from any computer on a P2P network. In one data-gathering process (see Bhattacharjee et al 2006c), the authors used key words from Billboard's top 100 album list (e.g., artist, album name) to enter and search file sharing availability on WinMx. They chose WinMx because there was no limitation on the number of hits returned in a search.…”

Video Killed the Radio Star? Online Music Videos and Digital Music Sales

“…However, finding the optimal level of sampling is often not a relevant problem in digital markets. For example, music and movies files are regularly uploaded to Internet platforms (which may or may not have licenses for the distribution of such content), leaving the firm little control about whether and how much product information to disclose (Peitz and Waelbroeck, 2006;Gopal et al, 2006;Bhattacharjee et al, 2006Bhattacharjee et al, , 2007. The interesting question then is if sampling can still be an effective trigger of demand even if the firm 1 When quality is costly, advertising may not be credible.…”