[Mahh]

This reads like a post that exists just so that people pirating music can give themselves an excuse to keep doing so.

I'd be interested in seeing the process that Hammond took to establish this relationship between pre release piracy and album sales. It says causal, but it seems like you can't truly control for all of the variables when you're dealing with phenomena in society.

One thing that sort of makes me itch is that the reported benefit of a one month in advance leak is a value rather than a ratio. It seems like a figure like that lets weight ruin the measure -- an album that was popular anyway will weight heavily when it comes down to the expected value.

[teamonkey]

Two problems I see with this are that he only uses one source for pirate figures - a private tracker specializing in sharing music - and focuses on pre-release leaks. These would both imply a link with music fans and not the piracy market as a whole.

[mohsen]

I'm not sure about this study, but there are cases where 'illegal' downloads have actually helped the producer of the product have better sales. When Radiohead came out Kid A the reviews considered the album "Just Awful"[1]. And I think that they never had any music videos or singles for the album, but a leak before the official release of the album gave people a chance to give the album a real shot. They liked it and they bought it. Kid A was Radioheads first release that became number one in the US and it also went platinum in the UK.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,,371289,00.h...

[res0nat0r]

The reason it went number one is because it was a new album from Radiohead. Also people wouldn't have given it a real shot after the official release date?

[mohsen]

Actually Kid A was the first album that made almost a genre change, which is why people considered it 'awful' in the first place: they were expecting the same old Radiohead and they got something completely different. So yes, had they released an album similar to the previous three, I would agree with you, but what they did was quiet risky and the free downloads allowed people to give it a chance.