Pew Internet Music Survey

What do musicians think about the P2P debate? The labels have been loud and litigious, and consumers have done their talking with their downloads. But it has been difficult to get a read on musicians\' position on the P2P debate - until now. In an American survey of self-described artists, and an online survey of 2,755 musicians, the Pew Internet and American Life Project concludes that artists are embracing the Internet as a tool for making, marketing and selling their creative works. The study\'s author, Mary Madden, states that "Across the board, among those who are both successful and struggling, the artists and musicians we surveyed are more likely to say that the internet has made it possible for them to make more money from their art than they are to say it has made it harder to protect their work from piracy or unlawful use." With respect to P2P in particular, Madden concludes that despite the illegality of music downloads in the United States, artists\' "overall judgment is that unauthorized online file-sharing does not pose a major threat to creative industries: Two-thirds of artists say peer-to-peer file sharing poses a minor threat or no threat at all to them."