Canadian P2P Study Concludes Downloads Increase Music Sales

A study commissioned by Industry Canada examining the ralationship between music downloads over peer-to-peer file sharing networks and music CD purchases has concluded that "P2P filesharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing."  The study, by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz of the Department of Management, Birkbeck, University of London, and titled The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music, analyzed data from a Decima Research survey and came to the conclusion that "Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs."